City Council Meeting April 6, 2026

MINUTES

City Council

Monday, April 6, 2026 @ 1:00 PM

City Council Chambers, City Hall

PRESENT: Mayor Eric Enriquez, City Councilor Cassie McClure, City Councilor William Mattiace, City

Councilor Michael Harris, City Councilor Johana Bencomo, City Councilor Becky Corran, and City Councilor John Munoz

ABSENT:

1. OPENING CEREMONIES 1.1 PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE - COUNCILOR MUNOZ. 1.2 PRESENTATION OF CERTIFICATES OF

APPRECIATION/PROCLAMATIONS - COUNCILOR MUNOZ. Councilor Munoz recognized the graduates of the Neighborhood Leadership

Academy.

Councilor Munoz read a proclamation for Fair Housing Month.

Councilor Munoz presented a proclamation to Anna Harmon and Jay Choate for

Graduate and Professional Student Appreciation Week.

Councilor Munoz presented a proclamation to Barbara Toth and Heaven Coquat for

Distracted Driver Awareness Month.

Councilor Munoz presented a proclamation to Linda Bartlett for 250th Anniversary of the Signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Councilor Munoz presented a proclamation to Sandra Ortega for Child Abuse

Prevention Month. 1.3 DEPARTMENTAL HIGHLIGHTS. Richard Hanway, Transit Director gave the overhead presentation.

Cynthia Alamillo, CIP Manager gave the overhead presentation 1.4 PETS OF THE WEEK. Stephanie Lewis, ASCMV Director presented Pets of the Week.

2. CONFLICT OF INTEREST INQUIRY BY MAYOR AS REQUIRED BY LCMC

SECTION 2-27 (E)(2) 2.1 None.

3. PUBLIC PARTICIPATION 3.1 Rocky Bacchus, Member of Public said I provided a handout which I think is being passed around now. Just over a week ago on March 27, El Paso Electric filed for a $70 million per year rate increase, which increases residential rates by 73%. I have been an expert electric rate consultant for over 40 years, testifying before the

California Public Utilities Commission, Nevada Energy, Public Utilities Commission of

Texas and New Mexico Public Regulatory Commission, and others. I have participated in every New Mexico rate increase for El Paso Electric as a party for the last couple of decades. Electric rates in New Mexico are an adversarial process.

Utilities have a fiduciary duty to get as much as possible for their owners. El Paso

Electric is now owned essentially by JP Morgan. So, they are a privately owned company. Interveners such as the city have to fight their request in order to get fair rates. It is just like in the courts, you have two sides, if you don’t fight you get rolled over. El Paso Electric states in their request that they planned to increase rates even more over the next five years, beyond this current 73%. El Paso Electric’s filing is

4,157 pages long. It has 18 sworn internal witnesses plus a request for another $2 million to be approved for external outside services. They are prepared for a major fight and have been gearing up for it for almost 6 years. El Paso Electric has requested a fast process so that the rates can take effect by the end of this year. The case is already filed. It is underway now, so it needs to be processed as soon as possible. El Paso Electric has fought to strike the testimony of interveners in the past and top experts will be required to fight this case. It will take substantial funding to get fair rates. Again, this is an urgent matter because El Paso Electric filed for a 70 million per year rate increase which increases residents’ rates by 73% and is to take effect this year. The chart I gave you, this table that you see is all the different rate classes and the amounts per class so that you could see that.

Jennifer Kreie, Member of the Public said I am here to talk about cut and paste.

Branigan Library Budget 2025 to 26, year 26, 1.2 million funded. Year 27, 15.3 million not funded, year 28, 17.1 million not funded. Budget 2026/2027, year 27, .3 million, year 28 5.3 million not funded. Year 29, 17.1 million not funded. So, what you do is you highlight these cells in the spreadsheet, do a cut, go down a row and over a column and paste. I would just say, do we want to be known as being very efficient and this is no criticism of liquor licenses, but we transfer liquor licenses, we do improvements on roads, but we need to have a vision for our community, for our

future and that is the library. Let’s not kick the can down the road.

LaVaughn Hart, Member of the Public said I am the Director of the Spay and Neuter

Action Program, SNAP. I want to take this opportunity to thank the council for your continued support of SNAP. We really appreciate the work that you have done to fit us into I know a tight budget. I am truly appreciative of that. I also want to thank those of you who worked on support of SB38, which has passed and so we should have some funding from the state level for spay/neuter services across all of New Mexico. This is a really good piece of information. So, to let you know what is going on at SNAP. We have been busy this spring. So far, we have already done over 600 vouchers, and we have done over 650 spay/neuters. So that is a lot in a couple of months, by the way that is not considering March yet because we are just starting our billing for that. We have also started our Trap/Neuter and Release, TNR program for community cats. I just started it in January. It says 50 on the handout that I gave you because we are not counting March yet, but I know there is at least 20 more that we have done so far in March and April. As I reported to you last time, I was here we have expended all the funding that I was provided under our contract with the City of Las Cruces as of

December 2025. Knowing the impact of reinstating co-pays, our board has continued providing our services without co-pays. We are using donations and grants to fund the surgeries that we doing at this point and the coffers are getting lower and lower and lower. However, as one of my former directors says something will turn up. In the meantime, I find that 3 a.m. in the morning is a really good time to worry about how you are going to pay your vert bills in the future. Requests for vouchers are still flowing into SNAP on a daily basis. Sometimes as many as 20 to 30 in a day. We are prioritizing the vouchers at this point, females, dogs and cats, female and male pairs, and then males. We are going to get everybody done. It is just going to take us a little bit longer because we need to stretch out the dollars that we have until our new contracts take effect and some other grant funding comes in. We are participating in the New Mexico Community Giving Day, we have $1,000 match, if you are looking for a place to give money we are taking. I am looking forward to coming back and talking to you in the future. We have some exciting things that are going to happen in the next year.

Lynn Moorer, Member of the Public said galvanized piping that requires replacement has lead in its joints, lead in its solder and/or lead upstream. Inspection reports noting the presence of galvanized piping is the closest Las Cruces Utilities comes to acknowledging lead in city piping. It is now trying to neutralize its findings after the fact in two ways. I will tell you about the first way today. The federal Lead and Copper

Rule requires that notification of known or potential service lines containing lead including galvanized requiring replacement occur within 30 days of completion of the initial inventory, which was due October 16, 2024, and then annually thereafter until those lines are removed. Documentation setting out this requirement has been provided to you at previous meetings, for example Handout B at the August 4, 2025, meeting. Handout 1 shows the notice the city actually provided to each property with galvanized piping. Of the 83 properties the city provided no notice whatsoever to 8 of them, for the remaining 75 the city failed to provide timely notice to any of them. The notices range from 42 days to 386 days after the inspector found the galvanized pipes. Handout 2 provides Las Cruces Utilities list of properties notified and its notification letter which you may observe is misleading. Comparing the city’s

notification list to Handout 1 reveals that Fairacres Elementary School is one of the 8 properties with galvanized pipes the city did not notify. Handout 3 shows the inspector’s description of the galvanized piping at Fairacres is grim. “Did not perform scratch test due to how bad pipes looked, I assumed they are galvanized due to the amount of rust”. My consultation with a licensed plumber about this report confirmed that galvanized piping tends to become highly corroded over time and rusts out.

Fairacres is one of the oldest schools in Las Cruces, having been built more than 50 years ago. Remember lead is particularly hazardous for young children. There is good reasons for environmental rules. You need to know if you have galvanized piping so that you can take steps to replace it if you have the financial resources and to try to protect your health until that happens by using a water filter for example. It is unconscionable that Las Cruces Utilities unlawfully failed or delayed notifying all of these folks. When I discovered that the city hadn’t notified Fairacres, I contacted the

Las Cruces School Board President who didn’t know about the galvanized pipes. If

Las Cruces Utilities notified the school by some other method the city was still required under IPRA to provide that documentation or an explanation as to why it was being withheld. In any case the city failed to follow the law. The majority of folks with galvanized piping live in disadvantaged neighborhoods. This is another example of

Las Cruces Utilities treating genuinely disadvantaged folks in our city abominably.

Liz Rodriguez-Johnson, Member of the Public said today I describe another example of Las Cruces Utilities failing to prioritize disadvantaged neighborhoods or treat them properly. This violates its commitment to the state and effort to receive $15 million in funding for implementation of the federal Lead and Copper Rule which the city must repay only one quarter. At the January 20th meeting we told you about mobile home communities on Spruce and West Hadley that the city is treating improperly. None of the 110 properties on Spruce is located on the inventory map where the address says it is. None of the 220 properties on West Hadley has an inventory record that matches the spreadsheet. Here is another, Handout A shows a mobile home community on

Avenida de Mesilla called Trails West which has 325 properties. The map shows 18 water hookups, by contrast the spreadsheet list 22 water hookups, 5 of which the city says have unknown piping. Las Cruces Utilities reporting of additional properties to the state that are not found in the inventory record appears to be yet another technique by the city to falsely inflate the number of disadvantaged properties. Plus, the city has inspected only one water hookup of the 18 or 22, whichever number you want to believe. They all need to be inspected because the inventory says the various hookups have different kinds of piping. One inspection is not sufficient for this community of 325 mobile homes. While 9 of these 3 mobile home communities have been treated properly at least they are on the inventory, there are dozens more obviously low-income mobile home communities across the city that aren’t. Handout B shows another one. These aren’t as upscale as the ones on Spruce, West Hadley, and Avenida de Mesilla. These don’t have entrance signs or communal fencing or guard houses. During meetings over the past a months, we have provided handouts showing 12 communities totaling more than 1,000 mobile homes without hookups that are still not in the inventory. By refusing to recognize that these folks exist the city avoids spending money on their inspection and pipe replacement and increases what can be spent on favored projects. Instead of inspecting all water hookups in every mobile home community across the city Las Cruces Utilities has prioritized and been inspecting properties on Cheyenne Court and Sagecrest Avenue with an estimated

value of over $400,000 and up. We would like to see clear evidence now that the city’s properly inspecting all mobile homes. It is a fundamental part of Utilities job, and it is necessary to meet the commitment that it made to obtain the $15 million.

Victor Vasquez, Member of the Public said I just completed the Neighborhood

Leadership Academy. I will start by saying that Catrina and Scott were amazing. They are welcoming and organized. The program exceeded my expectations by a mile. I am sad that it is over. During the academy we met directors, deputy directors and dozens of staff from different departments. We were able to visit some of the facilities.

Each department explained what they do and we were able to ask a lot of questions.

It was a treat during the last working session to see some of these same people discussing the future of Las Cruces. It is clear to me that the people we met were passionate about their work and cared deeply about the wellbeing of our city. That sense of commitment was consistent week after week throughout the program. We got a small peek at the countless moving parts that keep our city functioning every day. These are resourceful people that find ways to do more with less. I was surprised at how many projects require the participation and cooperation of multiple departments. I am proud of the people working on our behalf for the City of Las

Cruces. I wish everyone in our city could participate in the Neighborhood Leadership

Academy. In closing I will switch to a different topic. This is regarding the budget. I agree that our city would benefit for more third spaces. I believe in positive interventions for young people. I believe in rehabilitation and second chances for individuals. When you are planning a budget, it is like you are in the kitchen adjusting the ingredients for a big batch of soup. At this point in time, I ask that we add a little more seasoning for public safety and this batch of soup is like when we catch a cold.

It is not forever but just for a little while until we get better. Thanks again everyone and

Councilor Harris I look forward to your community engagement meetings.

Robert Williams, Member of the Public said I am glad I came today. There is a lot of good things everybody was talking about. I see we are talking about a budget. Just a little bit about me. I am a business owner. I pay a lot of taxes, so it is real important to what you guys are doing with this budget. Make sure that we can fund our libraries.

Make sure that you guys are spending it wisely and doing everything you need.

Especially with El Paso Electric, 73%. I can barely pay my shop electricity, my house electricity. We are in a world of mess right now. So, take it seriously please, the hard- earned money I am working till midnight sometimes, up early at 4:30 in the morning doing this. I am not the only one and I know that. There is a lot of other business owners. I am here to speak on behalf of them. Also, April I had a chance to meet with

Representative Bencomo last week and one of the questions I asked her was if you guys have had any kind of autism training? As you guys know, April is Autism

Awareness Month. I am a father of a son who is autistic. He was non-verbal. He just started speaking and now speaks three languages, but it doesn’t mean he is robotic.

He speaks them as he wishes. So, I am also here to advocate for all of the other parents that have to work hard like me. Spend our money wisely. We have to pay for therapy services, we have a lot on our plate, and we just want to stress that to you guys that everything you guys do affects all of us and there is a lot of us here. There is a small number of you guys and just to reiterate that okay. So if you guys can, I know that Mr. Story and the Police Department, they have autism training and I think it should go along, everybody that is up here on this panel because if you are not a

parent of an autistic children it is really kind of hard to understand even if you get the training. If you get the training, please take it seriously and make sure you reiterate that with every other officer. I don’t care how big and bad they are, autistic people need a little bit more time. So that is why I am here advocating for my son. One more thing that I have to speak about, and I know you guys are probably tired of hearing me bring it up, in that budget or if you guys need some help trying to brainstorm how to get this finished up. Let’s finish that skate park project. Like you need something to do, I know Sonoma Ranch, they have a lot of money, they got their little skate park, but we had ours right here and I helped build that park. I helped sell the bricks. You guys tore it up. Let’s get it finished up. Whatever is going on with it. Feel free to reach out to me. I would like to brainstorm with you guys and figure that out what we have to do. Let’s finish that one project and then we can move on to other things.

Christy Thomas, Member of the Public said I am one of the founding members of

Parks For All, LLC. I have spent the last 35 years fully emersed in what it means to be disabled. It affects not only the disabled person but also their families, friends and community that they live in. Federal legislation in the form of the ADA was passed 36 years ago so I have had a front row seat of what changes have been made as a result but more importantly what the act didn’t provide. Unfortunately, as with any piece of legislation it has enough loopholes and caveats that even the bare minimum of access can be overlooked in many circumstances. Things that are as simple as accessing floors in a building, using restrooms and traveling can quickly become impossible. Most of us have learned the hard way of things that others take for granted can become impossible or very costly. When a family member has a disability, it becomes difficult to find activities outside of the home in which they can participate and not feel excluded. Especially as an adult. My vision and goal is to build a park where the disabled of all ages have full access and inclusion that allows them to feel accepted and not accommodated. My two partners here, Olivia and Lanny will be coming up to speak shortly, unfortunately I asked if I could go now because I have to get back to my severely disabled adult daughter. But the idea is that even if we have certain accommodations be able to take them to a park they in no way, a lot of them are not able to participate, utilize the equipment, everything is surrounded by wood chips, and all types of things of that nature. So, we are starting a movement to gain public interest to get input from families like mine to see what it is that we can utilize and do for this community. Approximately one-fourth to one third of all of your

Las Cruces families have someone who has a disability whether they be a small child or a senior citizen. So, this is a part of our population that does deserve to be acknowledged and have something built more specifically for them in mind than having a few pieces of unusable equipment retro fitted in a park or two.

Diane Starbuck, Member of the Public said Southwest Coalition for Life is a right to life group from El Paso. They posted a form letter for members to send to send to 50 to 60 construction companies encouraging companies not to supply sand, aggregate, or other materials for the construction of Ocotillo Sexual and Reproductive Health

Care Facility. There is also a form letter for members to send to medical businesses around the work site that states, “We are concerned that this facility could tarnish the reputation of businesses in the surrounding area and raise significant public safety concerns. For the wellbeing of our community, I urge you to stand with us in opposition to this project”. Since the Mayor has chosen to be associated with

Southwest Coalition for Life, does he also condone this type of pressure being put on local businesses and companies? Is your association with Southwest Coalition for Life just an uniformed unfortunate mistake or are you also responsible for sending some of these letters and signing them, Mayor Eric Enriquez? This is unacceptable behavior for the leader of Las Cruces who is supposed to protect all businesses and all citizens. Mayor, nobody is asking you to deny your faith and in fact I said that I respect your right to believe whatever you want as long as it does not influence policy or take away from the rights of others. As a reminder New Mexico Constitution states,

Article II, Section 11, Every man shall be free to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience and no person shall ever be molested or denied any civil or political right or privilege on account of his religious opinion or mode of religious worship. In other words, there should be a separation of church and state. This current federal government is doing all it can to take away rights from women. Our rights to have control over our bodies and voting are just the latest. The Mayor of Las

Cruces needs to support all of his constituents not just the men. You cannot have a free society when half the population is not free to choose their own life paths. You need to do better Mayor.

Jovanny Hernandez, Member of the Public said I will be reading a comment from my partner Abigail Solutsegon who had to leave because she was going to work. “Hello, my name is Abigail Solutsegon and I have been living in Las Cruces for about 17 years now. I am usually not a pessimist. In fact, I am almost always not a pessimist. I am just starting to see my representatives who are supposed to represent me participate in events that are against me and my healthcare. When I am reminded by the women on the dais that support or represent me, the community who show up for people who are like me, so I still show up and I still give my public comments. I still show up to community meetings, and I put my sticker on things I want to see in the city and I still show up for my community and myself. So, I hope this council does right and just decisions today. I also want to say I am against any new infrastructure for

Border Patrol, and I would suggest that the Mayor use his platform to speak against that instead of speaking against reproductive healthcare facilities like Ocotillo. I have seen first hand kids being separated by their families afterschool so no more funding for Border Patrol and no new buildings.” Mayor si hablo Espanol me intiendes? Quiero leer un poquito de la Ejercito Zapatistade de la Liberación Nacional la ley revolucionaria de mujeres. En esta lucha por la liberación en este pueblo ejercito

Zapatista de liberacion nacional incorporará a las mujeres en la lucha revolucionaria sin importar su raza, credo, color ya filiación política con el único requisito qué hace suyas la amandas en el pueblo exportado y su compromiso a cumplir y hacer cumplir las leyes y los reglamentos de la revolucion. Hademas tomando la cuenta de la situación la mujer trabajadora en México se encuparán sus justas de amandas se ocuparán sus justas su sugueinte ley revolucionaria de las mujeres. Primero las mujeres sin importar su raza, credo, color o a filiación política tienen derecho a participar en la lucha revolucionaria en lugar y grado que su voluntad en incapacitar terminan. Segundo las mujeres tienen derecho a trabajar y recibir un salario justo.Tercero las mujeres tienen derecho a decider el número de hijos que pueden tener y cuidar. Eric, if you didn’t understand me, that was one of the demands from the Zapatista Army for National Liberation in their revolutionary law for the women and one of their demands is that women have the right to decide the number of children that they will have and take care of. Eric, please use your platform to speak against

Border Patrol and not against women.

Alberto Del Campo, Member of the Public said I am a full time student and also a full- time worker. I wish I could be here at every City Council meeting. I think this is a really good opportunity to engage with our local government but sadly I can’t and so one of the things I am going to talk about today is that, the accessibility of these meetings. I don’t think these meetings serve the working class and the youth of Las Cruces. They happen at 1 p.m. on Mondays, County Commissioner meetings happen at 9 a.m. on

Tuesdays and so the scheduling makes it incredibly hard to utilize this forum as intended. This is supposed to be our community’s chance to engage with elected officials as you all vote on policies that affect us directly. Look at the average age represented in the room right now. Think of those who can’t make it. Think of your constituents that are being left out of the decision-making process. The working class of New Mexico and Las Cruces, the bus drivers featured earlier, the educators, healthcare workers, the people that keep the libraries running. Those are constituents who’s input is so often left behind of these decisions. As you hold those chairs your decisions shape the life and reality of Las Cruces. The way I see it holding one of those chairs means a commitment to making sure one that these forums are accessible to the majority of your constituents and I think that should be a priority.

Your decisions here affect them the most. Please take the appropriate action to allow the working class and youth of Las Cruces to be represented in this space. Maybe shift the meetings a little bit later. I know so many students that I engage with every day that have opinions on the decisions that you guys make and it affects them directly and they want to be here. They want to show up but they can’t because they have class or a work shift. I mean 1 p.m. on a Monday is just so tough and it really limits who has access to these spaces. I haven’t been able to be here in a while and so I would like to say to Councilor Harris it is refreshing to see a new face and I have also noticed your commitment to meet your constituents where they are at and I want to thank you for that. I also want to extend my gratitude to Councilor Bencomo and

Corran, I see that you are championing initiatives that put our community first. You champion access to housing, so thank you for standing for our working-class families.

Lastly Mayor Enriquez your votes against a welcoming city which was an effort to protect our immigrant neighbors was received as disrespect. I saw the slide that was there up earlier asking for respect. I have seen it in different bodies both here and in the county commissioner where sometimes criticism for the decisions that you guys made is taken as disrespect. Your votes that affect our lives are taken as disrespect.

Jay Choate, Member of the Public said you might have noticed me earlier because I was up here for a Graduate and Professional Student Appreciation Week, thank you for that proclamation. I just wanted to second what my peer there was saying just now about trying to move these meetings to a more accessible time for people. Yet again,

1 p.m. is difficult time. I am able to kind of squeeze that in with some stuff which means I have skooch other things out of the way because most people just aren’t able to move meeting to a different time and engage with students at a different time. They typically work a 9 to 5 job, so it is hard for them to show up to City Council in the middle of the day. They have to come in on their lunchtime or take off so they are just not going to do it on a daily basis even if it is things that are important to them. I am hoping we can try and figure something out there or the very least do more of these community engagement events consistently throughout the year. That would be

appreciated because I think that accessing everybody across the city is important. So, you don’t get the same voices coming up all the time saying the same stuff. You want to be hearing from everybody in the city not just a couple of people who make the noise.

Jane Asche, Member of the Public said I am here to speak today about the recent protest on March 14, regarding the opening of a facility that will serve the needs of women’s reproductive health. The protest and ongoing public protest is essentially about a difference of opinions between two sets of religious views. One view being that a woman, many times a mother with children does not have the right to choose between her health or in some instances her life or death if she is carrying an unborn fetus that some consider already a child with a right to life. The other view being a woman deserves the right to choose between her health and wellbeing and in many instances the wellbeing of her children and family and in some instances her life or death while carrying a fetus which is still an unborn embryo until the moment of birth.

In our country, it has been a long-held tradition and constitutional guarantee that every citizen has a right to religious freedom, that is to choose the religious values one practices as long as those values do not do harm to others. In other words the separation of church and state. State meaning government. Our local city council members have a set of duties and obligations that they pledge to carry out which clearly does not include passing laws or developing policy related to reproductive rights. However, since our Mayor attended this recent protest today I respectfully ask you Mayor Enriquez should you attend future protests that you make it clear that you are appearing as an individual citizen to support your religious view about women’s rights to choose and that you are not attending in your role as a Mayor of Las Cruces.

This is consistent with our cherished tradition of the separation of church and state. In closing I want to thank the Mayor and the city councilors for this opportunity to express my opinion. A mark of your practice to encourage democracy. I know that the job you do in this job that you do you often put up with disrespect and threats to the safety of yourselves and family members. For that I am truly sorry and I express my deep appreciation that you persist in your public service in spite of the personal sacrifice.

Lara Jansen, Member of the Public said Mr. Mayor, I was shocked and disappointed when I learned that you spoke at the Southwest Coalition of Life of their protest of the new women’s health center on Lohman. That organization wants to take away a woman’s right to choose. According to their website their doctrine is in line with catholic and biblical teaching. Of course, you have the right to your own beliefs, religious or otherwise. However, New Mexico gives women the right to choose and it was not appropriate nor acceptable for you to show your support for an organization that wants to take away women’s health care rights. Separation of church and state still applies.

Leslie Woods, Member of the Public said for my comments for today I want to remind you of the words of John F Kennedy, our 35th President and our first Catholic

President. In the 1960 election Kennedy’s opponents sought to make his religion an issue. Claiming that if Kennedy were President the Pope would rule America.

Kennedy addressed the religious issue with these words from the Greater Houston

Ministerial Association September 12, 1960. I quote, “Whatever issue may come

before me as President on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling, or any other subject I will make my decisions in accordance with these views, in accordance of what my conscience tells me to be the national interest and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates and no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise. But if the time should ever come and I do not concede any conflict to even remotely possible when my office would require me to either violate my conscience, or violate the national interest that I would resign the office and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same.” Kennedy promised that if his duties as President conflicted with his religion, he would resign the presidency. Mr.

Mayor, I don’t know how to emphasize this enough if that standard is good enough for

John F. Kennedy and the presidency of the United States of America then it should be good enough for you and Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Juan Garcia, Member of the Public said before I get started I am extremely proud of our military and the job they are doing in Iran so far. Semper Fi. Today I want to speak about the 13-year-old that is dead in Las Cruces, again. Killed by another 13- year-old. Imagine the parents, the friends, the empty chair at the dinner table. If your eyes don’t tear, then something is wrong with you. We call it a tragedy as if it were a hurricane, unpredictable, unstoppable. A 13-year-old can’t legally buy, possess or hold a weapon. We want to teach respect for life, yet a child gained access to a gun because we, the adults, allowed it. A life erased in the blink of an eye because we collectively shrugged, we failed, period and another family will never recover. In my opinion there were two major elements that will help address the senseless killings of our youth. Responsible gun ownership and a change in attitude towards the most vulnerable, the unborn. Responsible gun ownership isn’t a bumper sticker, slogan or a talking point or confiscation of lawfully owned weapons. It means locking up firearms every single time and background checks that keep out those who shouldn’t have a gun. It means laws that put the safety of our children above the fleeting convenience of adults and for those who violate there have to be consequences. Recall the words from a recent trial of a murderer from the Young Park massacre. The court looked at the teenager’s crime and called it depraved mind murder. Saying it showed a “total and deadly indifference to the value of human life”. How did we get here? We talk about valuing life, but what kind of message do we send when we don’t even protect the most defenseless. Something has to change or our kids will keep dying. From a recent Op Ed by two of our councilors, Bencomo and Harris opposing the use of Flock cameras and going against LCPD and I quote, “We don’t raise these concerns because we distrust the Police Chief”. LCPD invited Las Cruces residents to register their doorbell cameras with Flock for crime resolution. Their comments, we strongly urge residents not to participate in this program. This is the kind of support we get from our council and in closing I know the Mayor has got a lot of flack for attending the prolife rally. On October 15th, 2022, Councilor Bencomo stood there and warmed up the crowd during a visit by MLG, same thing.

Spencer Taylor, Member of the Public said I am a former 15-year professor at New

Mexico State and currently Master of Social Work and I am from District 2. I would like to echo the sentiment about having a more accessible time for these meetings. I know lots of students are on campus and would appreciate being able to get here, myself included sometimes with class getting in the way or vice versa. I would also like to speak to Mayor Enriquez about your decision to attend this pro-force birth rally and

speak as an official speaker. I think it is important that we realize in our community that pro-force birth is an abusive stance. It is an inherently abusive stance. It is essentially leveraging the power of government, the power of force, weaponry, imprisonment, fines, whatever it may be to tell women that they must give birth whether they want to give birth or not. That is abusive and so speaking to you as a member of a group that we are part of, men, who historically have enacted a lot of atrocious things towards women. If we want to enact some level of repair, some level of apology, some level of healing, we have one thing to do and that is just to step aside. Occasionally as in this case maybe lend an allied voice here and there when called upon but for the most part, we need to step aside and listen to for instance all the women who spoke here earlier. Listen to the amazing comment Bencomo left at the last council and as I think Corran accurately called it fire. So, what can or maybe should we speak on more as a group as men? Well at that rally I understand you had a police officers go to silence counter protestors who were there advocating for women’s rights, and I think that really shows a lot about the positionality of the police and society. They often occupy space of pointing guns from the point of power elected or official power towards people, towards citizens, residents, individuals who are standing up for human rights and I think that we really need to in Las Cruces start shifting some of our perspectives towards emphasizing police as something that should not be there to continue oppression.

Yoli Diaz, Member of the Public said thank you, I sincerely appreciate your decision to move forward with the lawsuit against Memorial Medical Center. This action is a critical step toward restoring accountability and transparency for our community. In

2021, I made a deliberate choice to fully understand how our community reached such a detrimental position with Memorial Medical Center. I submitted numerous inspection of public records requests and conducted extensive research. What I have learned cannot be undone. What I now know cannot be dismissed and what Memorial

Medical Center has done cannot be erased. Following the March 23, 2026, press conference announcing the joint lawsuit by the City of Las Cruces and Dona Ana

County, Memorial Medical Center released a public statement asserting good faith and denying any breach of agreement and how you both rebuffed their efforts. But no one should be misled by MMC’s carefully crafted language. Actions tell the real story.

As you know I personally sought detailed information from MMC CEO Dennis Knox.

Portions of my request were dismissed as demands and critical information was withheld. Likewise, the City of Las Cruces’ August 2024 letter of default included requests directly tied to the asset purchase agreement. If Memorial Medical Center choose not to provide the required information on what basis can they claim compliance? Memorial Medical Center must answer for its obligations under Section

6.5 Indigent Care and Continuation of Services, expanded care services and reporting were required. They were not optional. The law was never eliminated. The program name changed and funding was never eliminated. The program name change and the funding was required to be modified legally but it was not abolished. Medicaid still exists. These are not technicalities, these are egregious failures that demand real scrutiny. After 18 months without fulfilling requests outlined in the letter of default, the conclusion is unavoidable and obvious. It was Memorial Medical Center not the City of

Las Cruces and Dona Ana County that failed to act in good faith and did the rebuffing.

The harm to Dona Ana County residents began long before this lawsuit. In 2014 when

Life Point health leadership implemented an aggressive and immediate expense

reduction in revenue enhancement strategy, the consequences were profound. By

2016 the removal of cancer care had already been documented. A clear violation of the indigent care program policy required under the asset purchase agreement.

These were not abstract policy failures, they have real human consequences, cost cutting decisions, compromised care, placing lives at risk. Residents were harmed and some residents died. This is not only negligent, it is unconscionable.

Denali Wilson, Member of the Public said I am here in a couple of capacities. I am a lawyer who represents children who have been sentenced as adults to life in prison and I am also policy council for All Safe New Mexico, which is a coalition of organizations across the state committed to advancing root cause solutions to public safety. I am here to express support for dedicating a portion of the city’s budget to the design of a juvenile gun diversion program. This represents a tangible and modest investment that would allow the city to begin developing interventions that actually reduce youth gun violence. I work every day with people in prison who decades ago received the harshest available criminal sentences for harm that they caused as children and because of that I am deeply familiar with how little these traditional system responses deliver to youth, to crime victims and the community at large. The moment that we are living in demands innovation, and it demands creativity. It calls on us to act on what we know that when young people cause harm our responses must reflect the realities of adolescence and that meaningful accountability is only possible when we recognize young people as still deserving of support capable of growth and capable of contributing positively to our communities. I am grateful for the council’s leadership and considering an investment in a juvenile gun diversion program and myself individually and members of the All Safe Coalition are eager to partner with the city to design a program that is both effective and can serve as a model for communities across the state.

Jay Hill, Member of the Public said I was born and raised in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

I come before you today to speak on something that is near and dear to my heart.

Much like my good friend Christy said that we have a problem with our parks and over the last 12 years we have seen 17% of children born today have some sort of disability. With that we look at our public access and our public play spaces and we don’t see the inclusion that this community with special needs needs. Many children with disabilities, they simply don’t have the same opportunities to play and explore and connect as other children, and I am not just speaking as a southern New Mexican that has a heart for that. I am speaking as a father with a son who has a disability.

And I can tell you that there is nothing more heartbreaking then to go out and watch your child want to play with the other kids but not having the opportunity. At the same time there is nothing more heartbreaking than listening to your family, be afraid to take a child to a park and not be able to play. That is why I am asking the city to begin looking to identify an all-abilities park. This is something that is specifically set aside for children. This is not a spot just to gather. It is a spot for kids to actually be kids.

Those that can’t do what we were able to do that we have often taken for granted. I want to acknowledge Chief Story in the efforts that he has been doing to make our parks safer. This is truly good work that matters to all of us. At the same time it takes more than just police. It takes financial responsibility, accountability, and the operation of a true budget. As we consider this project I ask the council to please keep an eye on our financial abilities to fund things like this because many times you will see our

community come with an idea or project that we think will be so beneficial but by the time it gets washed through the government process we have spent millions of dollars of taxpayer’s money that never equates to what it truly meant at this operation. I am going to give you one example, and this was for a public housing project that is here in the city of Las Cruces. Mind you that the national average to build an apartment door, one unit should cost somewhere between $60 and $90,000 per unit. Our city spent over $345,000 per door to afford somebody the opportunity to have housing like this and while that is something that I bring to the table I ask that as you prepare your budgets, as you prepare to look and help those that truly need the support make sure that we do so in a proper way. That the funding gets to where it needs to be and with that I ask that it goes to our special needs children in the community.

Olivia Kirkpatrick, Member of the Public said I am one of the members of Parks for All

Las Cruces. We are a grass roots effort built around a single idea. Las Cruces deserves a fully inclusive all abilities park and I am here to ask for council support.

According to the most recent US census American Community Survey, Las Cruces is home to approximately 116,000 residents. Although after seeing earlier now we are

119,636. So, my numbers are kind of behind. Nearly 18,000 of them 15.5% of our community live with a disability but a disability does not exist in isolation. Behind every one of those residents is a family, a caregiver, and a friend. The ripple effect is substantial. We are not talking about a park for a segment of our community. We are talking about a park that serves us all. The core of Parks For All of Las Cruces is this, we deserve a park built intentionally for everyone, especially people with disabilities, cognitive and sensory needs, limited mobility and families who have never had a park that felt designed with them in mind. The heart of why we are asking for a dedicated inclusive park, not just ADA equipment added to existing parks, presence is not participation. A person who can reach a park but cannot fully use it has not been included, they have been accommodated. That is the difference in meeting a minimum standard and building something that actually changes lives. What makes our vision different is its purpose. That it would be designed around the therapeutic developmental and physical health needs of people of all abilities and all ages and the beauty of it is that it would just look like fun. Every element could serve a function, a space where the design does the heavy lifting and every person who comes through the gate just gets to participate and to do so with dignity. No one is limited to what is built for someone half their age or a fraction of their experience. Parks for all exist to be a bridge between this community and this body. We are doing the work and we are not asking you to carry it alone. We believe there is a park in our future where everyone can truly use and enjoy the same park. That is not presence, that is participation and that is what we are working toward. We are hoping that together we can build something Las Cruces has never had. Not just a park for the community but a park built by the community and we are asking for your support to get there.

Derrick Pacheco, Member of the Public said thank you very much to Councilor

Bencomo, to Councilor Harris for the Op Ed recently in the Sun News regarding Flock and bringing that to the discussion table. I think people need to learn more about that on their own. Folks need to understand what Flock is and what the CEO of Flock has to say, especially about people who speak out against Flock. Councilor Harris, thank you for addressing the elephant in the room during the Work Session last week. You were on point with everything. Councilor Mattiace, very, very disappointed in you. You

seem like a standup guy every time we met and now you are just laughing me off right now, disrespectfully of course. But you did lie to me. You said you were going to research Flock. You said you were going to call other cities that have been dealing with Flock issues and then you never did. You actually lied to me on the phone and then you went into a deep story about calling your cousin Columbo over in New

Jersey, remember that? You did nothing of what you told me you were going to do.

You did nothing of what I asked you to do. Why don’t you just step down? Councilor

McClure, also disappointed in you. You did nothing that I asked for. You lied to me also. You said that you had no power to bring forth a resolution to council and you directed me to Councilor Bencomo instead. Why do you think we are having such hard time with IPRA requests? Think about it. The people want to know what is going on in their city. When I call on Councilor, or Mayor, or anyone, I get the opposite of what respectful engagement is. I get no phone calls. Councilor McClure remember when I called your secretary at your office and I asked you for an in-person meeting?

And then your secretary called me back and said nope. You’re not interested in meeting with me. Same thing with Councilor Mattiace, nope, not interested in meeting with me. Left a message with Mayor, his secretary, nope not interested in meeting with me. So if you won’t meet with us and you are just going to have us file IPRA requests instead but now you don’t want to give a budget to Christine and handle more IPRA request, the thing is you guys are lying to us and so when other people are watching Las Cruces from other states and other markets they want to know what is going on too so they are requesting IPRA documents. They are like what the heck is going on in Las Cruces. What is up with the murders? What is up with the everything? This is not working out. It is just not working out and 3 minutes of public participation is absolutely not enough time to engage with you to let you know what is going on.

Albert Lee, Member of the Public said the topic that we are discussing today is the women’s health care center and a boycott against its construction which you, Mr.

Mayor, have endorsed. Given that those who oppose the center do primarily on religious grounds it would be appropriate to refresh our memory of the New Mexico

Constitution which I am not going to do since it had already been quoted today which was Article II, Section 11. But I am going to say that I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that if there were citizens who organized a boycott against the women who have abortions, they would be guilty of molesting them for their religious opinions. It seems to me to those who boycott contractors who work on the women’s center clinic are likewise guilty. Please bear these words in mind as we present our ideas on the women’s health center and boycott against it and apparently that the Mayor has supported. I am going to give you a little story. I met a woman, one of my child’s classmates. She was the 30th child of a women who was in a rural area of Texas. Her mother started having children at the age of 15 and gave birth every single year for the next 30 years. There were no duplicates, no twins, no triplets, they were single births. She never got to meet her mother because her mother passed away after delivering her. She was the 30th child. She had no hospital in that area, so I want you to consider when we boycott or talk about women’s health that these kinds of things happen and they are in every state like New Mexico, Arizona and Texas.

Jim Hoerst, Member of the Public said lead, follow, or get out of the way. People of the state of New Mexico have decided by law to allow abortions on demand in this

state. Pursuant to that decision they have authorized and funded the building of a facility in our community. Unfortunately, our Mayor disagrees with that decision. It is against his religion. It is against his principles. Mr. Mayor, you answer only to your conscience for your religion. I would have it no other way. I am glad that you have principles. I wish all politicians had principles. Apparently, our President doesn’t have any principles. The question is not whether or not you have a right to your principles, certainly you do. The question, Mr. Mayor, is what do you do when your principles conflict with your constituents’ principles and you seek to deny them rights which our laws grant? The people who want an abortion clinic and you don’t agree. Who wins?

Who loses? Mr. Mayor, if you are true to the constitution and your state the people should win. We the people have the right to our principles too. One of those principles is that a woman has the right to control their own bodies and their reproduction. Mr.

Mayor, I concede that you cannot lead on the construction of an abortion clinic and remain true to your conscience. Perhaps you can’t in good conscience, simply follow on the issue. That leaves only one option, get out of the way. Your participation in the

Right To Life event was an act of obstruction. If you consider JFK’s prescription that elected officials should resign if his conscience should disagree with the public good then he should resign, then obstruction is not an alternative open to you. That leaves get out of the way as the only other option. That means, among other things, renouncing the boycott. You can do that today. Mr. Mayor, please get out of the way.

Eddie Thomas, Member of the Public said the reason for my getting up to speak to you particularly Mayor is because I have been left wanting for a resolution or any progress made on a promise or maybe not a promise but some kind of a resolution for the situation in front of my house which I brought to your attention almost two years ago. I am talking about the flooding and ponding issue where my house is on Calle

Del Encanto. My house is at the lowest part of that street. I brought that to your attention and my Councilor Bencomo back in July 2024, I have the emails to prove it.

The reason I didn’t send you recent pictures of my situation is because you already have them in your email if you search my name, you should be able to find all of the letters, all the emails that I sent with pictures of the situation at my house. Now whenever it rains it ponds in front of my house. Since I live at the lowest part of that street I get all the water which is fine, I love rain as much as the next guy but it stays there and mosquitos and tadpoles form there okay and I know you know what brackish water is and that is what it turns to in about three or four days and it stinks to high heaven. You and Councilor Bencomo gave me some kind of hope that something would be done, okay here we are two years later. Nothing has been done.

We are here on rainy season is coming, this is April, May, June, July. So, we are going to get some rain and there is going to be some days where I am going to get an accumulation of rain and like I said like I said. I love the rain as much as the next guy but not when it causes problems like this. I have been failed, nothing has been done and we are going on two years here. I just want to remind you of the hope that was handed out to me back in those days we were communicating about that. So please do something for it okay because it is not a pretty situation and I don’t think anybody would have put up with it as long as I have.

Dan Romero, Member of the Public said I am a Las Cruces resident. I am here to speak today about the Pavement Evaluation Report that was commissioned in 2024 and released in 2025. The report was conducted by RAS, Road Asset Services. While

canvasing for some state legislative representatives I noticed the poor conditions of the city streets in the Planet area off of Roadrunner. I was able to contact the

Community Development Director and that led to the contact with Superintendent, and I was able to get that report. I asked one resident along the way how long his road had been poor and he stated that he bought the home in 2009 and it was bad and it has deteriorated drastically since then. It is 2026. There is 501 miles of paved road in Las Cruces. There are 41 ½ miles of good road. That is a rating of 100 to 86 on the pavement condition index, 210 miles of satisfactory road which is 71 to 85, 175 miles of good roads, that is 70 to 56 on the scale and 75 miles of very poor or serious roads. It seems that RAS did a sampling of the road. For instance, they didn’t do all of them. The good roads are 83% of the roads in Las Cruces but they sampled 18.8%.

The satisfactory roads are 41.8% and they sampled 28%. The fair roads were 34.9% and they sampled 26%. So, it wasn’t a real complete part. Road conditions for cities should be 70 and Las Cruces are 67. RAS said that there should be at least $12 million a year spent for the next five years on the roads to keep them at 67%. The city has budgeted $4.3 million which means those roads will end up being at 63.4%. So, it is going to go down. If you spent $6.3 million your roads will end up being at 64.8% of the score. I know it is a hard thing to do but I would request that the council have discussion. Publish a pavement report. Earlier you talked about 11 EV buses that 2 to $3 million a year per bus. Spend some of that money on our roads. We need quality of life in Las Cruces and it starts in our streets.

Tim Jenkins, Member of the Public said I have been coming to city council for almost

2 years now, since Officer Hernandez was murdered and I see a pattern for 2 years.

This seems to get worse and worse, that there is a certain demographic of people that come up here and bash the Mayor and bash the Chief of Police and bash Mattiace and the council members and I apologize for that behavior. That is unacceptable. You guys do not deserve that. If the public has a problem with any members of the city council, I suggest that you send them an email and do it behind closed doors personal like you would want done to you. You guys do not deserve that behavior, and I apologize for that behavior and ask that we change that.

4. ACCEPTANCE OF AGENDA City Councilor Michael Harris moved, seconded by City Councilor Becky

Corran, to accept the agenda as presented.

RESULT: Carried

MOVER: City Councilor Michael Harris

SECONDER: City Councilor Becky Corran

AYES: Mayor Eric Enriquez, City Councilor Cassie McClure, City Councilor William

Mattiace, City Councilor Michael Harris, City Councilor Johana Bencomo, City

Councilor Becky Corran, and City Councilor John Munoz

5. CITY COUNCIL MINUTES 5.1 WORK SESSION OF FEBRUARY 23, 2026. 5.2 REGULAR CITY COUNCIL MEETING OF MARCH 2, 2026. 5.3 WORK SESSION OF MARCH 9, 2026.

6. RESOLUTION(S) AND/OR ORDINANCE(S) FOR CONSENT AGENDA 6.1 RESOLUTION NO. 26-120: A RESOLUTION APPROVING A VACATION /

DEDICATION PLAT KNOWN AS THE LILLEY - KATERINA COMMERCIAL

TRACTS. THE PROPERTY ENCOMPASSES APPROXIMATELY 11.746

ACRES AND LOCATED ON THE SOUTHEAST CORNER OF SONOMA

RANCH BOULEVARD AND THURMOND ROAD. SUBMITTED BY GEM

SURVEYING, REPRESENTATIVE, ON BEHALF OF DANIEL P. LILLEY AND

KATERINA INC., PROPERTY OWNERS. 6.2 RESOLUTION NO. 26-121: A RESOLUTION AMENDING THE FY2026 - 2031

CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS PROGRAM.

7. RESOLUTION(S) AND/OR ORDINANCE(S) FOR DISCUSSION 7.1 RESOLUTION NO. 26-122: A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A CONTRACT

AMENDMENT TO EXTEND THE TERM AND INCREASE THE TOTAL

COMPENSATION OF ELECTRONIC FUEL CARD SERVICES FROM WEX

BANK DBA WRIGHT EXPRESS FSC (WEX) OF CAROL STREAM,

ILLINOIS, VIA NEW MEXICO STATE PURCHASING DIVISION (NMSPD)

CONTRACT NO. 20-00000-22-00058, TO AN AMOUNT NOT-TO EXCEED $1,500,000 SUBJECT TO APPROVED BUDGET APPROPRIATIONS, AND A

TERM THROUGH DECEMBER 31, 2026. Donny Prosise, Purchasing Supervisor gave the overhead presentation. City Councilor Johana Bencomo moved, seconded by City Councilor Becky

Corran, to Approve Resolution No. 26-122.

MOVER: City Councilor Johana Bencomo

Councilor Becky Corran, and City Councilor John Munoz 7.2 RESOLUTION NO. 26-123: A RESOLUTION REQUESTING BUDGET

AUTHORITY FOR THE REVENUE RECEIVED FROM THE GROSS

RECEIPTS TAX (GRT) INCREMENT APPROVED BY VOTERS DURING THE

NOVEMBER 5, 2024 GENERAL ELECTION. Lesley Doyle, Finance Director gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor McClure asked deferred facilities, can you talk a little bit more about what that is going to look like specifically?

Jimmy Moreno, Interim Assistant Director Public Works said the deferred facility assets maintenance is the maintenance that we will be doing on all the facility buildings within the City of Las Cruces. So, I spoke to it at the last Work Session, a couple of the slides there. It showed a lot of our maintenance, roof replacements, roof rehabs, parking lot rehabs.

Councilor McClure asked do we feel that rehabilitation of a building is part of that?

Jimmy Moreno said yes, that would be included depending on the nature of the maintenance. If any of the facilities or portions there are end of use of life we can replace them and rehabilitate those as needed depending on priority.

Councilor McClure asked were any of the design planning issues for the library included into the deferred maintenance?

Jimmy Moreno said no. None of the library unless there is some specifics, not as far as any of the design or rehabilitations, that was a separate project.

Councilor McClure said let me give just a background of how I saw GRT unfolding for the public. I don’t mean to go sort of half and half. I know that we have two resolutions at hand. Part of it is that we know that Senators and Representatives have a small amount each, right? Every year when we get about $10 to $12 million for some of these larger projects it is really hard to fund these things and we have the Housing

Department; we have the burger. We put it together, we leverage what we can. So, this was part of the question. How do we leverage these large projects? I cannot follow Jennifer’s kicking the can down the road. Love that and that is where we have gotten with a lot of things, with our parks, with our library and I would like to ask whether or not we add specifically the library to deferred facilities to bump up where we are going with this. I know that we are looking at it strategically with the GO Bond, but we have got to be a little bit more clearer with people who are invested in the spaces that make sense in that way. I would just like to see that we put our money where our mouth is, where the library is and help kick start that. I hate to throw the wrench in right now, but I think it is correct that we look at it that way. What we have deferred crucial things and the library is one of them. A lot of this term of how do we leverage? It is starting these small things so that when we go up to the legislature and they have to make really hard decisions they go, okay we can give more. And we did.

We got almost $2 million for the library this year but when we have a $45 million project it is really, really hard, how do we do that? Yes, the GO Bond will be a big component of this, but we also have to show that that is what our value is, right? I think at the Budget Retreat a lot of us spoke to that but I think that one thing that kept kicking in my head was Councilor Bencomo said we all take the library support for granted and we shouldn’t. We should be explicit in that right now especially with how we are doing this. That is kind of where I am at right now. I think that we should think about even kick starting some of the design issues. So, when we are putting our money 2, 3, 4 million ask that is very specific and very clear on where we are going and what our values are with the city and I think the library is one of the top ones right now.

Councilor Harris said coincidentally whether or not any of that $4.3 million could be directed towards the library was at the top of my list as well so I will echo that. I think there is definitely some justification there, maybe even the branch libraries, those are definitely facilities and I am sure they will be benefiting so I would like to see them benefited. The other thing is I think Fire Department, fire apparatus, 100% we need to order those. We won’t get them for a while but Hoagland, Alameda, ever since I have been driving it has been a problem. Ever since my parents have been driving it has been a problem. I think it is a good time to get that done. So, my other question is on

the Police Department vehicles. I think we also, on the next, on the bonding section we have some next stuff for vehicles as well. So how does this $1.5 million, what does that get us? Plus we are also talking about another $1.5 million basically in the next things. That is like $3 million for police vehicles. That is a lot.

Lesley Doyle said what 1.5 will get us is about 18 new police vehicles. So, this would be now and as you mentioned in the information that Chris is going to be presenting, we will also have $600,000 every year for both police and fire to continue to upkeep their fleet because you know those vehicles do take quite a beating.

Councilor Harris said for the public’s benefit and ours, $1.5 million for 18 vehicles is a lot of money per vehicle. So maybe some more info on what all goes into the vehicles.

Are they going to have ballistic windshields? I know that was a retrofit thing that came before a previous council. Any more info on that would be helpful.

Jeremy Story, Police Chief said the updated cost, that is standard across law enforcement agencies across the country. The base cost of the vehicle is just under $50,000 for the police intercepter, that’s the SUV typically you see or Ford Explorer.

When you put in the cage, the radios, radios are up to almost $10,000 per radio. You have light package obviously for visibility, which is very important for the safety of the officer but also for the safety of the public and when you factor in everything it is about $87,000. I can say the Deputy Chief Mullen is a very frugal person and he has been able to find a way to spread that money out better than we ever have by being competitive and going to other vendors and making sure that he is getting the best price possible and they are essentially competing for our business. So, we have been able to reduce the cost or at least keep the cost where it is even though prices have gone up drastically because of inflation inn the last two to three years.

Councilor Bencomo said before I ask my questions, I want to zoom out a little bit because I think it is important to name a couple of facts. I think there has been a very intentionally well-crafted narrative in the last few months about what this new GRT funding was intended for. So, I wanted to remind the public about the question that was actually asked on the ballot. The question actually read and if you have any updated language please correct me if I am wrong. I am pretty certain this was the actual language on the ballot. Shall the City of Las Cruces impose a municipal gross receipts tax in the amount of three hundred twenty-five thousands of one percent (0.3250%) in the revenues of which shall be used for funding capital improvements and maintenance for public safety, streets, parks and other public facilities and critical infrastructure. That sounds correct, right? I am going to repeat the last part of that.

Which shall be used for funding capital improvements, and maintenance for public safety, streets, parks, and other public facilities and critical infrastructure. Again, I think there has been this very carefully crafted narrative that this funding was intentionally for just two departments which are our public safety departments and that is wholeheartedly been accurate. That is not what the question asked. Fact number two, and the reason this is important is because it took a very long time for me to come around and support this initiative initially because the second fact is that GRT is a regressive tax. Meaning that it is structured so that the tax rate effectively decreases as the taxpayer’s income increases. Meaning lower income individuals pay a higher

proportion of their income compared to wealthier individuals. This is a regressive tax.

For me it was very hard to support. However the third fact that I have and the ultimate reason that I did support it was because in New Mexico municipalities have been left with very limited avenues to increase our revenues making it harder for cities to run efficient services and programing and so it is very difficult for cities like us in New

Mexico to just say we are going to increase our revenues for general fund in other ways. It is not difficult, it is impossible. It is the only avenue we have been given so given that and given the fact that we have 82 miles of roadways that need to be repaved. That we have failing parks, that we have failing infrastructure in terms of our current buildings. For me it was important to ultimately advocate for this on the ballot.

When I spoke to people about why they should vote for this that is what I talked to them about. So, I just want to remind folks that the initial intention and what the intention we should continue with is that we are trying to catch up. I am so sad.

Jennifer, the bucket is really on many things. The library is absolutely one of them and you can see that on the outside, on the inside and that is accurate. And then what happens is that the public comes here and says we want to see these things and then we create these dynamics where advocates for one thing are sort of fighting against other advocates for other things. I don’t think we should ever be in a place where folks who are here to advocate for ADA parks should be throwing unhoused people under the bus. We shouldn’t be in a situation where people advocating for transit for better roads should be throwing transit under the bus. But it happens because we have created this scarcity model and the other fact is that the most well-funded department in our budget is the Police Department. It is the largest slice of the general fund and in the time I have been here, in the seven years I have been here there is always money for PD and I am not making that wrong or right. That is a fact that there is always money for the Police Department, Real Time Crime Center, Park Rangers. I think if we just zoomed out and really what this GRT and what the public said, yes even poor folks said you can tax us more so that we can get the services we deserve in our community that we look at them equitably and when we don’t do that we create this scarcity bucket where communities and advocates are fighting against each other when they shouldn’t be. On quality of life issues, in quality of life issues that are evidence proven to improve quality of life, to improve safety we keep kicking those down the bucket and I am going to be very frank that when this final iteration came out for this item and the next item we were voting on I was very surprised at the numbers for fleet. I feel like this isn’t a conversation we had been having with a matter of urgency and so I was very surprised that the high numbers of fleet. I understand that one apparatus for the Fire Department is $1.2 million. I understand that that is an incredibly heavy burden and I also understand that we in every budget, I believe there has been an increase in amount for PD cars and so I don’t want us to fall into this narrative that somehow PD has not gotten what they have wanted because they have and so then the things that are left are this driving track which we got a ton of capital outlay for but is on this list and then in the next item we have that number for the public safety facility so those things are I think are as much as, it doesn’t matter. What

I am trying to say is that often I think that what happens is that we place this inequities in our own departments and perhaps it is whoever has the most political influence or whatever it is but again we are here and I kind of feel like we are doing the same thing and the public gave us this gift. They gave us this huge opportunity to actually go into deferred maintenance of so many things in our community that people want to see improved like their libraries, like their roads, like drainage in their neighborhoods. Like

these things that often feel boring, but they are not. They are going to improve people’s quality of life, so I just want us to approach this in the spirit of that. In the spirit that we went to the public with this very hard question and 55% of our community voted in support of so I would say that. I really was shocked that the numbers that you all came to us regarding fleet because it has not felt like this is something that we have been urgently talking about in the last few months. At the

Budget Retreat I don’t believe this was an item discussed heavily.

Lesley Doyle said this was something as a team that we determined was a priority based on what we had heard from you. At least that is how we interpreted it. That does not mean that it has to remain that way but I had heard from our fleet administrator, I have heard from Chief Story, Chief Daniels, that this was something that they really did need and that is why we are bringing it as they advocated for their departments. That is why we are bringing it before you.

Councilor Bencomo said I will gently push back on that, right? Because everything on the list is something we need, from every department, right? Every department presented things that we all need. I think it is the matter on how we ended up internally choosing what rose to the top and not and I think that my hope would have been that it could have been easier for staff because I understand. I can’t imagine how stressful this was even in my little bit of hunger games conversations we have had. The Budget Retreat for example, Work Sessions you know as I think about when we went to the public and we ask about the public the kinds of things they wanted and

I don’t want to just pay lip service to that. I was hoping that when we engaged with the public that it would make it easier for staff to say okay these are the kinds of things that we need to funding and so I am not sure if Councilor McClure was going to present some sort of amendment here, even in the next item I will obviously wait for.

In the next item the amount that we are putting towards CIP projects is incredibly low and I just understand, I understand wholeheartedly how hard it is to say no to PD because I get so much push back on that and I get how hard that is and I also understand the facts are in front of us that we have deferred maintenance on so many other things that we have an opportunity now to do some of those things a little bit more equitably and still support our department. I am not saying, don’t worry everyone

I am not saying defund, I am not going to say the scary defund word, I am not saying that. I am just saying that we do this a little bit more equitably so that we can get to. I don’t know is there is going to be some sort of amendment, but I think we should have that of discussion.

Councilor Mattiace said staff has had a very difficult job here. I see a different outcome in this screen because I have been here two years but I was watching how the City of Las Cruces has actually neglected a lot of things that a lot of departments have been neglecting facilities, the parks, public safety, the Police Department, Fire

Department, stations, maintenance, roofs on different buildings but that occurred over the last 12 years, whoever was on this board. That neglect came about to actually present what we are seeing today, that is we have high crime. That is obvious. The numbers speak for itself. We have a lot of poverty and that is why the Community

Hope has such a, you have seen that in the previous slide, a healthy budget they have, the Community of Hope. We have to do that and of course they work for grants.

They get a lot of grants. They get a lot of federal help but still they are addressing the

needs of the poor and they are addressing the needs for shelter but back to my theory that we need to spend money on those people that get the most benefit from it and that number one would be the library because they deal with thousands of people.

Thousands of youth, adults use the library. Again, we need to spend a lot of money on public safety, Police and Fire because again, they are impacting the entire 113,000 people. People want to be safe and there was a gentleman that got up and spoke and

I think it was Mr. Hill, accessibility for disabilities for children and adults that have disabilities to use our parks but one of the comments he made was I don’t even want to bring my kids to the parks because they are not safe and then the second was accessibility and the equipment that had to be built. So what he was concerned with was the safety of parks and I believe Chief Story and the administration has helped that with the Park Rangers but every time we add something to our public safety departments it does cost money but it is impacting and it is keeping 113,000 people safer and with a safe city other things start to get better. More businesses come in.

More companies want to look at our industrial park. You have to think of where we are putting our money to attract more gross receipts tax and if you we have a good library and we have a good branch, we have a facility that we have is really appealing, it has the books and the equipment that is necessary. That is going to attract people to live here. So I again would like to support what McClure said and that is, maybe Mr.

Moreno can you explain on deferred facilities and the 4.3 million specifically on the building because when I was Mayor and we had a city council we put into the funding when a building was built we had a depreciation and I don’t know if it was 5% or 10% annually but the depreciation amount went in there just like we do with the police cars we have. Is that gone or has that built up or where is that now? Did that go away in

2012 as well?

Jimmy Moreno said we don’t have a deferred. Most of our facilities’ maintenance comes from the general fund and so typically what is currently budgeted or has been budgeted in the past few years will cover our general maintenance. However, there is large impacts like large costs like roofs, full systems, rehabilitations, HVACs and anything that is a large cost that doesn’t cover it, so it gets us through on general maintenance but not on larger cost that are associated with some of our older facilities.

Councilor Mattiace said let’s say we go in and we get this $45 million, I hope someday we see that new library another branch. Will there be something built into that funding so that you have the maintenance covered and maybe replacement of a roof? Could you actually put that into the funding of it?

Jimmy Moreno said yes, there could be programs within our CIP budget that could be funded that way like a roof replacement program or different types of programs like that. We tried to increase our budget based on new buildings, Fire Station 9 as it comes and new that buildings get programed into the facilities. We try to increase our general budget for that and then we try to utilize the leverage of the CIP for like roof replacement programs, parking lot replacement programs that could be funded separately to supplement that.

Councilor Mattiace said I was going to ask you in supporting McClure and Bencomo

on more money for the library. Where are you going to move that from? What happens with your $4.3 million? Let’s say we make an amendment to see more money go to the library?

Chris Faivre, Community Development Director said I would just like to jump in here and say that there could be an opportunity to look at some of those other projects when we get into the bonding discussion and maybe some of those other projects that you like to discuss that might be an appropriate place to see if there is some money under the 40% new project bucket that we could look at maybe for that. If you take anything away from the 4.3 it is going to come away from basically the pot that is going to go to any of those projects so if you take it away and put it specifically for the library it is going to take that money from basically the largest pool of city facilities so my recommendation would be to have that discussion in the next presentation specific to new projects and maybe look at the library from that perspective.

Councilor McClure said I just had a follow up to that. That was kind of my question is where and which resolution might be a good amendment but crucially here is where I am thinking too, in terms of strategy, right? If we do some of the design work now with some of this deferred maintenance money, will we be better prepped when we go to

Santa Fe when we ask them for the bigger amounts? Because the other one isn’t going to be there until October? We aren’t bonding out until October?

Chris Faivre said that is correct. I do believe that the funding for the design of the library was paid for out of the TIDD. I am not sure if there is a gap there or not but that is how the city was using the TIDD funds for the library design. If you are talking design for the new project or the new upgrades, that is where that funding came from.

Councilor McClure said I don’t know how everybody else feels on that but I would be happy either way but I do think and not to jump ahead but yea you put traffic calming in the next one. So, I am happy about that. I think that we just need to see that support for the library, and I don’t know how everyone else feels in terms of comfort of where that might go but we just need to be very clear about that right now.

Councilor Harris asked I also kind of echo the hesitancy on the fleet in general and so a specific question I have before I get to ranty is in the general budget, the general fund budget how much is in there for police vehicles? If any or is it all coming out of here and we are freeing up some general fund for that?

Lesley Doyle said there is nothing in the general fund for police vehicles at this time.

Typically, what I have seen in the past is that there is an amount that has been transferred and by and large it is spent on Police and Fire. This is a way to free up the general fund so the vehicles for the other departments now can actually move forward.

Councilor Harris said $1.5 million is still a lot and vehicles don’t, depending on their visibility vehicles don’t stop crime but at the same time I did see one on the back of a flatbed tow truck the other day, so I understand that there are maintenance needs acutely. So that is good. To be clear we are not trying to triple dip and get a whole

bunch of police vehicles by including them in a bunch of areas in the budget?

Lesley Doyle said no sir, what we would have budgeted at this point would be 1.5 million for plus or minus 18 vehicles and those are replacing the very old ones that are in pretty bad shape. I would if I might address a couple of other things that hopefully make you feel a little bit better is that while this list here is based on money that we have received because we have been collecting the GRT and then we are going to talk about the bonding. Going forward we do expect that there is going to be about 4.4 million a year that is not going to be specifically related to debt service and our recommendation is that 4.4 be specific for facilities maintenance. So that is an additional amount that they would be available every year. We have historically done a bond for about 5 million for the Fire Department and their apparatus as you have heard me say before we are doing everything we can to bring back that bonding because the debt service is so high. So, this is also like a swap for bond that we would have typically taken out for them.

Councilor Harris said that bond swap is actually extremely good context because long term, I am in favor of fire apparatus anyway because I know we have lead time issues and stuff but if it also swaps a bond that is icing on the cake and then just a kind of a general question is. There is obviously a lot of support for the library. Does the action item that we take actually have to say, library on it or when we say, deferred facilities and asset maintenance that obviously mean it is quite flexible and it goes towards a lot of city things, is it good enough that staff understand that the policy direction of council is thus?

Ikani Taumoepeau, City Manager said it doesn’t have to be if you are asking is it required, it isn’t. Obviously, any direction helps that we can delineate at this point in time. Now there can be changes if we need to make changes in the future on any specific projects. The challenge is once those funds are spent on a project we would ask that if there is any changes no funds be spent on the project because sometimes the runway is long and it takes a year or two for things to start but I would just say options are available to change and amend and the more direction we get at this time the better.

Councilor Harris said to follow up on that. This pay as you go stuff is more flexible than the bonding stuff because if we go out for a bond we have to include certain language for NMFA and we are legally bound when we issue those bonds that we are going to spend it on X,Y, and Z, right?

Lesley Doyle said that is correct, that said there is some flexibility in those projects but as the City Manager mentioned, once we get started we need to ensure that we have that funding available.

Councilor Bencomo said just so I am clear, I am not suggesting the 4.3 be reworked. I am suggesting that we increase the 4.3. On the driving track, do we have a total cost for that already?

Chief Jeremy Story, said we have. The County is the one who initiated the project and

did the initial schematic design and site selection. So based on the schematic design the estimate is around 7 million. Until we have the full design that is still a ballpark estimate because we don’t have full design done.

Councilor Bencomo asked 7 million and we are putting in 5 million?

Chief Jeremy Story said well capital outlay came from the legislators. So, it would be

3.5, County Commission I believe we are going early next month or at the end of this month for another 2 million from the county.

Councilor Bencomo said what I am going to say is that I think this could be reworked.

Do you know what the timeline is? When do you want to have it done?

Chief Jeremy Story said we should have full design because the county is moving forward with that by October when we receive capital outlays that we should be ready to break ground by the end of the year best case scenario.

Councilor Bencomo said if there is still a gap we can always go back to the legislature. Here is another thing, right that I think about when I think in terms of some of these projects. What do we know always gets funded by our state legislators? And I feel like PD projects will always have high favorability. If there is any room to rework some of these numbers I feel like it is here because we know one, that it is a partnership with the a County and they will have their responsibilities, two we are already saying we wanted to commit to some number, and three legislators are saying they are committing to some numbers. That is my suggestion. I don’t know if that needs an amendment or not and I think Chris you are saying in the next item we can rework how we figure out deferred maintenance of some facilities to include the library. I am ok with that. My suggestion is that we increase the 4.3 million and simply not rework those numbers.

Lesley Doyle asked your suggestion would be to remove it from the 3.5 million?

Councilor Bencomo said right now yes. My suggestion is and I am happy to make an amendment if that is what is needed but I think it could be open for discussion is that we lower 3.5 million for the driving track. Chief Story, what did you say the County is doing?

Chief Jeremy Story said I believe the County has already put in 300,000 and they are doing another 2 million.

Councilor Bencomo asked is there a reason that we are not trying to sort of match? Is there like an equity issue like we are going to use it more? They are going to use it less.

Chief Jeremy Story said we would have priority for sure. We have more officers. Of course, this would be in combination with the Fire Department, which has a larger department as well.

Councilor Bencomo said I just think there is an opportunity here to maximize dollars for many different kinds of things knowing that we can also go to the legislature in

2027 and ask for gap funding that might be needed here. And hopefully with a driving track we will have less need for more fleet because there will be less accidents.

Councilor Corran said for this again we don’t have to explicitly say but I would like to say that I know there is some things on the list of the 4.3 million but what I was going to say was I don’t want us to take away from that as it relates to the library. I also just wanted to echo all of my colleagues that I think wherever the investment in the library is even if we know that is our hope for the GO Bond I think we also need to respect the community inputs that we have heard from a very wide diversity of folks to include the library here and as part of these critical investments. So, I echo I think everyone that has spoken so far to put that somewhere. I also would not want it to come out of the 4.3 million in deferred maintenance. I was going to propose that that comes out of the Municipal Court study because I don’t see how that has any primacy in what we are talking about. That is in the next conversation, but I am also open to hearing this idea that I would not want us to contribute more to any joint city/county thing than they were willing to commit. So, I think for me it is a parity issue, and I think I have experienced this disparity in a number of actual infrastructure projects where we invested an enormous amount of our public dollars and they didn’t match that investment. I would support shifting that, to deferred maintenance, but I don’t know if that would be supporting the library or I will still make my proposal in the next thing to support the library and perhaps the rec center and the following thing. So, if that was an amendment or a direction, I would support that as well.

Councilor Munoz said I just want to share the thought that costs are going up, expenses are so high. Now with the cost of housing, cost of gas, of food. It is a reality right now. I also want to share that it isn’t necessarily as competitive of pinning people against each other. I agree with that comment. I think we can creatively look at this and try to work together. I know the language isn’t as such in the initiatives, so I am not talking about them. I am talking in general we are talking about budgets.

Creatively maybe it isn’t, you know how important an all-inclusive park is to me.

Maybe it isn’t creating a brand-new park but retro fitting and really working on an existing park with a foundation again just looking at the things creatively. You know with other funding mechanisms we look at the library and accelerate that to save money and look at making that happen sooner rather than later and possibly even look at a temporary building to house the library so that there is no interruptions of services. It is a gem, I get that and it is important. Again, looking at creative things.

Again, I know that the languages in the initiative but as a holistic discussion we also need to talk about economic development. To fund these services in what we want to do as a city we need to create jobs that are not just livable wages but thriving wages that bring a lot of income and then consequently later GRT to our coffers here to the

City of Las Cruces so that we can do more. I like Councilor Corran would be willing to look at the Municipal Court study and see what we can do to look at funding there.

Councilor McClure said I would also support the Municipal Court. I think it is hard to say what deferred facilities we came into this with real ideas for, I think if we look at in the next one but I think there should be a very clear much like we had to make it very

clear, traffic calming, the library, the shirt obviously we would like to see it and I think that you are hearing that from everybody on the dais today.

Councilor Harris said I just wanted to echo that it is a very good point that the state delegation and the federal delegation really like giving us money for public safety stuff and if they funded the Real Time Crime Center and they have given us money towards the driving track and I think that is great. Those programs should be fully funded and if we have other agencies and other governments who are willing to help us fund them then I would be in favor of leaning into that and then using our own indigenous funding to do more of our deferred facilities maintenance. The disparity between the County ask and our ask does seem a little bit much but it is a little bit more of a break than I was expecting especially because yea sure we would have primacy on it but there is a lot of other agencies in the county then numerically then just Las Cruces so it might be nice to see a little more input from there. So, I would also support moving a little bit of money away from the driving track toward deferred facilities and stuff so that we can maybe convince the county to pick up a little more of their share or get some more funding from the state to make up that gap.

Lesley Doyle asked do you have a specific amount that you are wanting to move?

Councilor Harris said the County was going to be 2.3, maybe if we want primacy on it and we are going to be using it more 2.5. I am open to other suggestions.

Councilor Corran said if that is a motion I second it.

Mayor Enriquez said let’s further discuss before we get to any amendments.

Councilor McClure asked what exactly if we move that money around what are we getting for the library at this point?

Chris Faivre asked are you looking for that money to go to the future design or are you looking for that money to go to ongoing maintenance specifically of the library even while the renovation are going? Just a little bit of clarity on where council is looking to put additional funds.

Councilor McClure said this is where I kind of lean on staff to say tell me what the best method of spending this money and that would kind of lead to whether or not that we pull from other areas. If we take 500,000 from the driving track and plank it up over deferred facilities, what do you get out of that? I don’t get a real sense of that. What I am trying to say is using a budget as a value statement we are not saying that right now, but we are also not clear on what that looks like because I don’t think it has been clear on what the future for the library is specifically.

Chris Faivre said if it would make sense to put some money towards the existing facility or put it to the future design of the facility. It probably makes more sense to go that route once the building goes under construction it will cease to be operating and meeting that sort of ongoing maintenance stuff so if your recommendations which pocket or which bucket that should go to I would probably say it make more sense to

put it towards the future of the library.

Councilor McClure asked to me the future of the library would come out of this bond, right? To me that makes more sense than what we are looking at here is, I think part of the GRT too was how do we do things fast? How do we fix things that are, I don’t necessarily say that some of these things are fast but we are also planning ahead.

The Fire Department, right? We know we won’t get that for another two years. So, things like that. Hoagland, I drive that one too. That is a beast if we can make some changes that people can see that is what we are aiming to do. The library is a bear, maybe I should say it is an elephant. What do you do with an elephant? One bite at a time, right? That is with some of these other projects, they are elephants and we are trying to do the best we can with those elephants right now?

Chris Faivre said so to that point if you are looking to put more money towards the future design of the library without jumping ahead and talking about the next resolution, I would say if you are looking to put more money into that 4.3 it would be for additional facility maintenance and upkeep independent of the library then you could have a larger discussion on putting some of the proposed GRT bonding towards the library’s renovations in the next resolution. So that is what my recommendation would be from that standpoint.

Councilor Bencomo said I don’t think it should be either or. I think it can be both.

Again, I appreciate what Councilor Corran said about respecting the incredible support the library has had in order to get us here and for me it is not 500,000 because you are right, what does that really go to. To me it is $1 million that can do towards the deferred facilities’ bucket in order to start moving things along. I would agree that it would go towards to the future plans to put any money towards the building that is going to be renovated and even if we say whatever we are going to do that in the next item and we are really put some money behind the library because we know that the GO Bond isn’t going to complete the entire project. I still think deferred facilities deserves a little bit more money and I still think there is parityissues with the county with the driving track and 2.5 million is significant. That is a significant investment in what that could look like and a million dollars in that deferred facilities item could go a really long way for something like the library. Whether it is here or in the next one. Another million dollars in deferred facilities could go a really long way for those deferred facilities. That is where I am at. I think to me it makes a lot of sense. I think we will be able to leverage other dollars. That is going to be completed. I have full confidence that that will be a completed project.

Councilor Munoz said a point of clarification. It seems that these two resolutions are really tied into each other. I know I mentioned the Municipal Court study and so did

Councilor Corran. Would it make sense to?

Christine Rivera, City Clerk said if we wanted to suspend the rules, we should have done it in the beginning to listen to both of them concurrently. We did discuss this topic this morning and we didn’t want to confuse the two pots of money and so we wanted you to vote on the separate pots basically.

Councilor Mattiace said you gave us some surprise money that might be coming down the road. You mentioned 4.4 million. Can you explain more about that and maybe we can just leave everything here alone and work on the 4.4 million?

Lesley Doyle said this 4.4 million is going forward we will once the bond sell, we will have to pay about 8.8 million in debt service, beyond that debt service amount, any money that we collect in the GRT we can use for whatever in whatever manner we want. The recommendation would be that it would be for, or that we have discussed would be that it would be for deferred maintenance. So, it is an ongoing, we continue to collect the GRT and we collect more than we would have to pay for our debt service amount. That is the pay as you go residual amount beyond debt service that we would have every year.

Councilor Harris said I wanted to clarify a little bit. If we say for now that we want to put 2 ½ million towards the driving track, that kind of puts on parity with the county and the project will get completed one way or another I think I am pretty confident in that. There is enough interest in stakeholders that it is going to happen and it also flows into the next segment and then if we put that into deferred facilities to asset maintenance, while there is a lot of talk of trying to put something towards the library on this slide also I’ll say but I think also the library has to go somewhere while it is being reconstructed. We have a lot of facilities in the city that require maintenance and so if we are taking care of other facilities, I don’t know that, I think there is strong enough direction that if we are just generally maintaining our facilities like it is going to benefit the library in some way. Then also since you mentioned the 4.3 pay as you go, if we put 2 ½ million toward the driving track and come around next year and there is this funding gap and the state is like, we already gave you 2.9 million our federal delegation was no luck, we have got 4.3 that we can still allocate next year and if it comes around and we still need it after the final designs and everything have been completed that seems like an easy time to have that discussion as well. I don’t think waiting a year and not having that million dollar direction for a year, is it significantly impact that project in any way especially I am hearing that we won’t know the final cost until the design documents are decided and we know, we have got a lot of stuff that we know we could use that under line item 1 immediately.

Mayor Enriquez said I just wanted to go back to the beginning, to Richard’s presentation with Transit. What he showed was 1986, about 56,000 the population and 2026, we are 116 to 119,000 population. So there has been some growth. There has been some neglect. There has been some issues and some concerns and along the way you have that growth there is an increase in crime. There is an increase in other things that take place and things have been neglected and when we talk about the Police Department, we will look at their call volume as we looked at Transit’s routes and passengers and so it continues to grow but we can’t neglect and so we have to look at those things. I believe PD didn’t get the request for vehicles last year and if they did it was very minimal. There is nothing in the general fund for this year.

So again, we are catching up. And this is an opportunity and I wanted to say about the driving track was it became urgent because where they trained before is no longer available. So, our options are driving to Santa Fe. So that is why it became urgent and

I am all about leveraging money and getting people to help us and get external money to pay for those but the urgency is now. I am not in favor of cutting it back. I am saying

we have to move that forward because otherwise we are having to spend money to go to Santa Fe for our cadets and for continual training, which is not good management of our finances. Christine has an update of what we can do to move forward with these two items.

Christine Rivera said I have discussed it with Brad, what you could do is if you want to hear the next item, we could basically table this for now until after we hear the next item then we can come back and vote on it. So, it is up to you.

Continued discussion after removing from the table for discussion.

Councilor Bencomo asked on the 4.3 million are any of the 4.3 million deferred facilities asset maintenance is any of that going to go towards the 290 projects on the

CIP?

Cynthia Alamillo said ideally the first round of projects that will be selected will be from the CIP because it will be existing projects. However, we do have to have a little bit of flexibility to identify those emergencies or unexpected situations that happen and we want to make sure we address them. So, there will be a combination.

Jimmy Moreno said there will be some overlap. There is some projects on the CIP, for example, re-roofs and parking lots and things like that, so there is definitely overlap and that will be included as well.

Councilor Bencomo said I think a million more dollars in this fund could go a long way and I think for us to be responsible and responsive and I just want to say that framing the community input meetings that we had as fraudulent is deeply problematic. There is no evidence for that, and I think that when we go to the public and we ask the public to tell us what they want we have to trust them and this narrative that doubt should be cast on them I think is really irresponsible and really quite shameful. I am sad to hear that being spread around and that being said I really want us to be responsive to what community is asking us to do. I want us to be responsive to the serious needs of our community. There is urgency in many places, and I think ensuring that we have the biggest bucket as possible in order for deferred facilities and asset maintenance is important.

Councilor Harris said we talked about this quite a bit. I think that we will have plenty of opportunities to complete the budget for the driving track as it is being built. If we need to make up some funds we can absolutely do that so to that end I guess if there is no more discussion, I have a motion to make. City Councilor John Munoz moved, seconded by City Councilor William

Mattiace, to table Resolution 26-123 until after we listen to 26-124.

MOVER: City Councilor John Munoz

SECONDER: City Councilor William Mattiace

Mattiace, City Councilor Michael Harris, City Councilor Johana Bencomo, and

City Councilor John Munoz

NAYS: City Councilor Becky Corran City Councilor Becky Corran moved, seconded by City Councilor Michael

Harris, to remove Resolution No. 26-123 from the table for discussion.

MOVER: City Councilor Becky Corran

SECONDER: City Councilor Michael Harris

Councilor Becky Corran, and City Councilor John Munoz City Councilor Michael Harris moved, seconded by City Councilor Becky

Corran, to amend the exhibit to reduce the driving track to 2.5 and then apply the 1 million to the deferred maintenance.

AYES: City Councilor Cassie McClure, City Councilor Michael Harris, City Councilor

Johana Bencomo, and City Councilor Becky Corran

NAYS: Mayor Eric Enriquez, City Councilor William Mattiace, and City Councilor John

Munoz City Councilor John Munoz moved, seconded by City Councilor Becky Corran, to approve Resolution No. 26-123 as amended.

Councilor Becky Corran, and City Councilor John Munoz 7.3 RESOLUTION NO. 26-124: A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING AND

APPROVING SUBMISSION OF A COMPLETED APPLICATION FOR

FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE AND PROJECT APPROVAL TO THE NEW

MEXICO FINANCE AUTHORITY. Lesley Doyle, Finance Director gave the overhead presentation.

Chris Faivre, Community Development Director continued the overhead presentation.

Councilor Corran asked do we do an amendment process of this? That feels that if it is for the rec center then we should just say that it is for the rec center. I am not sure if this is about communicating that we don’t have the capacity to do those road improvements right now or the rec center is separate from that because that was related to the park that I think we were talking about in that area as well. So, I just had a logistical question about that, can we assume that is what this means or do we have to be more clear in saying yes that is what we absolutely want?

Chris Faivre said our recommendation was to not obviously put it towards specific roads improvements because of capacity and timing. Our recommendation was we agreed with not putting it towards that one possible use could be money for a rec center so ultimately when you guys are voting on this resolution you can say no if you still want to put it towards the road but could also say you would like to put it towards

future rec center and then we can kind of work with Lesley and her team among the language that needs to go into the application as that moves forward. So again, the rec center was just a pivot from staff saying we don’t think we are going to be able to do any of these things in the first cycle, I also just kind of point out that this is just the first two-year cycle. We are looking at what can we get done in that two-year window and what makes sense to prioritize from a staff standpoint and that one just felt like we probably weren’t going to get to it in these first two years and what was a better use for that funding.

Councilor Harris said that was also a question of mine. What we are voting on right now is to direct you to apply and you just need consensus on this specific things, we are not making motions to change that line item or that line item, right? There is no amendment to make, we just tell you?

Chris Faivre said that is correct.

Councilor Harris said I guess my input is I like the million dollars for the public safety training facility, that is appreciated that that was reduced based on our last Work

Session and I appreciate the cooperation between Chief Story and Chief Daniels and coming up with the solution they proposed last time which was I think a lot more efficient and still gets them a good training facility and that can be built a little quicker.

I agree that we should probably put that $2 million towards a rec center. I understand that there are several possible locations for said rec center. So, putting it towards a specific street doesn’t make a lot of sense. The Muni Court design I also am skeptical of that. I think there is too much unknown about that future and there is places and things that we can get done in the next two years so I would also agree that I would like to see that move somewhere else, perhaps the library. Although I also wanted to point out because I think it came up on the previous discussion that we got 1.7 million for the library in capital outlay this year, so my understanding is that the design is taken care of. Like we are going to fund the design, that is already paid for. Now we are trying to put together money to actually move dirt or move drywall, I guess. And

Engler Road extension, also totally in favor of that. That is a pretty important thing. It is not my district but people I talk to mention it all the time regardless.

Councilor McClure said I think I also if there is an option for a rec center I think I would go for that as well. The road improvements because I have told people too that a lot of times we have to think about road improvements and fundamentally doing something of the upkeep but if we can kind of make do and to start the process for something that people really want and we only have one. Just like we only have one library. I think I would be interested in that. I am really interested in examining the design of the

Municipal Court, $2 million does seem like a lot but if you guys can justify it, I don’t know. That is where I am at too.

Councilor Munoz said I appreciate the staff adding the comment of the capacity project timing because you are the subject matter experts. I mean there are things that we want, there are things that we requesting. There are things that the public wants but it is also important to set expectations and add some reality. So, I appreciate that. I too would want to look at the Municipal Court design and maybe

most of that goes to the library and I would probably see if there is a way to get through this a way to direct some of that to deferred maintenance as well. The deferred maintenance never works. You say I am going to put oil in my car six months from now. That is not a good, you know, and that was supposed to be maintenance three months ago. That is just not going to end up well, right? The other piece with that our employees, our city employees, they work hard. They are good hard-working employees who care about what they do, care about their facilities. It is important that they go to a functioning, safe, pleasant facility so that they can provide good constituent care so those are my thoughts on that and again, thank you for putting this together. I know it wasn’t easy. I know it is difficult and most importantly thank you for your honesty in transparency and capacity on project timing.

Councilor Bencomo said I think I also accept the recommendation from staff on moving that towards the rec center. I think rec center also placed really high when we went to community input. Number one, number two I think it also goes to the conversation we are having about young people. I think that is really important and $2 million I think can go a really long way into helping us build that ramp to what that can look like. I am curious about the $2 million CIP projects. I think some people may think well who cares, I actually think about, I hear about drinking fountains at parks all the time from people. It is like these little things that make our quality of life just so much better. The little things that people can see immediately, I think are really important.

Cynthia earlier in the department presentation talked about how even a little bit can go a really long way to get projects off of the CIP list. So, for me I think there is space, I would hope to see space for this to grow. I see this under new projects, how come this isn’t under the 60% deferred action?

Chris Faivre asked are you are talking specifically I guess, about the 2 million? Some of those on the CIP could be a project that maybe hasn’t started yet that just needs a little bit of money so it could go towards an ongoing, you know I guess there could be some overlap with the maintenance side of things for sure but there could be other things there that could be a new project that we just didn’t have the money for on an existing facility or some piece of infrastructure that needs to have some work done so maybe a little bit of Venn diagram there.

Councilor Bencomo said that was my biggest question here is I wondered why this $2 million pot was under the 40% of new projects given that it seems like they’re maintenance projects but again for me if this grows I think this was the full sort of like goes to the spirit of asking the public to vote for the GRT increase meant for us to just deliver better services.

Cynthia Alamillo, CIP Manager said you are right to identify a little bit of conundrum of whether this is brand new or is it a maintenance or repairment, repair project. So, as you mentioned parks drinking fountains is a project that we need across multiple city facilities, especially parks. Parks has a master plan. So, there is a lot of things that can be as an actual brand-new improvement or as an improvement. So, we want that flexibility to move projects forward. So, with the main intent of the selection of the 2 million for the capital projects are projects that have scored high in the CIP process and also that do not overlap with current categories that we are funding with the GRT

and lastly that a small funding can give us a strong head step. So, if you put all three tasks to identify projects it was also a challenge, but we have a large quantity of projects that we know a little bit of funding can help us move in the right direction. To go back it is a little bit of a back and forth, but these are projects that help the community at large.

Councilor Bencomo said you had a great presentation at the Budget Retreat where you made us guess some of the things. Are those numbers at the top of your head?

Can you remind us the total number of the CIP list in terms of the number of projects and the number of dollars that it would take to get them all done?

Cynthia Alamillo said currently we have 290 projects in the CIP. The CIP has a range of five years. If we decide you know we are going to fund all of the projects that we have in place, we are going to give departments all of the funding needs that they have identified we will need $1.1 billion. That is only for the next five years. As you know we have a lot of projects that need capital needs on a routine basis every year.

So, after those five years we have projects that we know that we need to replace.

That includes significant projects for all of our legacy parks, bathroom replacements, drinking water fountains, generator replacement, and HVAC program. So, we have a lot that we should expect that are going to come. So, we always need to try our best to stay ahead of the curb.

Councilor Bencomo said so 290 projects in five years and $1.1 billion in order to get those done.

Cynthia Alamillo said we only have about 185 who have no funding at all. So that is majority of the projects. The projects that have some sort of funding, either partial or complete is 106.

Councilor Bencomo said for me council like this is why increasing deferred maintenance buckets is so important. Like this is not great, 185 projects that have zero funding, right? There is an urgency in that and I think that we can do things creatively and we can do things better and ultimately that is why we ask the public to raise taxes on themselves so that we could pay for more things and provide better services for our community so that is why I just feel so strongly about increasing those kinds of funds ultimately because it is just better customer service. I know that staff are working magic every day to try to get things done and that goes to all departments. My last question. I think one of the biggest things that is missing is that we really haven’t talked about the GO Bond and sort of like the vision behind that and

I think that is important part of the conversation and so that the public understands just how much we are thinking about the library and the GO Bond in specific numbers.

Are we able to talk about that?

Christine Rivera, City Clerk said we are actually going to bring that to the Work

Session on May 11th because we are actually working on that right now as a staff.

Councilor Bencomo said can we at least talk about, here is the thing, the GO Bond has proven very successful for Las Cruces. We have been able to get so many really

amazing things done. Like new fire stations, new parks, housing, trails, the animal shelter. They get done because not only because they have to but because staff is great and those kinds of projects get done and that is why they have been successful and that is why the public keeps approving them and putting the library on the GO

Bond is a really good idea and I think it is an important idea and I just want to put that out there because I think that is just missing from the conversation and I think the public needs to know that.

Chris Faivre said more to follow at the May Work Session, but I agree with your comments.

Councilor Munoz asked you guys will do this in conjunction with parks master plan, right? It doesn’t necessarily make sense to unless it is just in complete disrepair, to repair and replace the water fountain and then later on spend $25 to $30,000 on a new and then later on upgrade the entire park and tear that up again, right? It wouldn’t be good use. You guys are coordinating that?

Cynthia Alamillo said the funding for the park drinking fountains, we want to have some flexibility because it will include actual fountains. It will include the dog bowls.

So, we want to make sure that we have that capacity and flexibility to replace as needed and to bring in new fountains as well as water resources to call it across the city because we know that is an amenity and we need to make sure that we have always working.

Councilor Munoz asked that will be in conjunction with the parks master plan in working in?

Cynthia Alamillo said majority of the projects that have a master plan associated to it we leverage that because we want to make sure that we are actually helping the department implement their master plan so this is only Parks and Rec and there are some other departments that also have master plans.

Councilor Harris said I wanted to go to the 60% because I didn’t mention any of that.

Since you are looking for support and direction, I just wanted to say that I support pretty much all of those. Personally, I think I would like to see maybe a little more money in terms of traffic calming measures but otherwise I just wanted to throw that out there since that is the ask right now.

Councilor Corran said I just want to support the rec center. I do want to talk about this in context. I do know that is what the community is looking for. I also wanted to just think about this a little bit from a geographic equity lens. I know there is a lot of discussion about where we can situate new rec centers and just people in my district might roast me for this, but we should not put the rec center on the East Mesa. I am asking us to please put a rec center on the west side of town where folks have been historically underserved. My district has 27/28 parks, something like that. So, we are over served if there is such a thing, but I just want to speak for the need of a rec center and my hope that we can do that in a place historically not been necessarily served by recreation facilities as much as our east side has been. I just want to

mention that as something that I hope we can think about and then also I just want to speak to the Engler Road extension which is driven by, the NMDOT has put the

Engler Road exit from 25 on their 2027 start date plan so literally several people have said to me everyone me my predecessor promised me this for ten years or something but it is on NMDOT’s plan of action for the Engler Road extension from 25 to happen and so that is what this commitment is to thinking about this traffic flow issue that we have in that part of town Sonoma Ranch Boulevard as the main outlet right now so I just want to name why that appears now because it is a time related issue that we are facing and is really going to happen and NMDOT has a lot of money and so I just wanted to say those two District 5 related and/or not District 5 and again maybe I am not doing a great job of this but I really hope we can put a rec center on the west side when we think about using that $2 million as initiating that project.

Councilor McClure said I would concur with west side. I would also concur with traffic calming a little bit more but I am going to defer to experts with this one if we are talking about defer. I am confused about the CIP projects options for funding. There was 2 million for park projects, design construction, how did that go?

Chris Faivre said those were some of the original things that staff brought at the Work

Session and then from that you can see that basically what came out of the Work

Session was that one sort of didn’t rise to the top of sort of the consensus from that but it is there on the list that obviously is a project that you guys could certainly fund and put money towards. This was just kind of bringing you up to speed as to where we left off on the February 9th Work Session but again the full list you can see far exceeds the $8 million that we had for it but it is very much still an option for council.

Councilor McClure said it sounds like some of the CIP smaller projects might be included in? Maybe that is something she can speak to? To show that we are going to get, like drinking fountains are a park thing. What other things could we be seeing that might be included with parks that we might have lost in that 2 million?

Cynthia Alamillo said for the parks projects right now what they have on the CIP that is fully needed I mentioned Villa Mora Park. They currently have funding, but they need a little bit of gap funding to move forward. They also have multiple needs in terms of park restroom improvements, playground renovations. The city has if I remember, 86 playgrounds and we know that is a constant need that we need to take care of. Ideally, we will be renewing 5 to 6 playgrounds every year. We also have park parking lots improvements. We know that our fields and rec centers are well used but then we need to ensure that the parking lot is still up to standard. So those are some of the parks projects that come to mind that I do know that they need funding.

Councilor McClure asked within deferred maintenance, are the restrooms kind of managed through Public Works in that way? Can we give money to that because I hear that a lot too the where are we getting the money to making sure these restrooms don’t look a little weird? So, I am wondering if we have built that in to make sure that some of these needs in terms of restrooms are also being allocated for?

Jimmy Moreno, Interim Assistant Director Public Works said the restrooms are a

parks facility however if the restrooms are located within Meerscheidt, that is in

Facilities and Public Works would handle that, but we work together with our partners in parks to make sure some of those are taken care of appropriately with the appropriate funds.

Councilor McClure said that is exactly what I wanted to clarify is when we remove stuff like this that there is embedded in other things that I think other people have made that point and I just wanted to clarify that for the parks.

Jimmy Moreno said another example is as well is the parking lots. Most of the parks’ parking lots are actually Facilities within Public Works. That will be part of the 4.3 funding that will be utilized on those areas as well.

Councilor Bencomo said back to the Municipal Court. I guess I would be okay reducing this as well but not taking it off completely. I am curious about the status of

Municipal Court. Did they move to their building? Do they have a safe working environment?

Chris Faivre said they are back in the building but beyond that I don’t have any specific details.

Jimmy Moreno said they are back in the building. We finished the HVAC renovation project to get them back in there. That building is old, it’s historic. There is a lot that the building does need. I think the intent of this $2 million for the Muni Court design is for a new Muni Court because the cost of Muni Court for rehabbing the existing building is almost equivalent because of its historic nature to a new building. So that building is at its end of life. So, we are putting what we can to maintain it a safe facility. There is going to be some ADA improvements that will be utilizing some of that 600k for in addition to that, so we are doing smaller projects to make it at least a viable safe place to work however Muni Court is at its end of life.

Councilor Bencomo said that does happen when you defer maintenance for so long.

So, I think cautionary tale for Municipal Court and that building. It is obvious that they need to go somewhere else. I think we need to put something towards making that move forward. Obviously again, you are the experts in terms of thinking about that but

I do think it is important that we do consider that they do have to be moved and that they need to go elsewhere whether it needs to be a new facility or whatever because I don’t think it is appropriate that we keep people in unsafe conditions and that is highly used by the public. That I guess is the only thing I will say. I think I am okay with reducing that. I don’t have any proposed number in mind, but I just wanted to bring that up given that we had been talking about Municipal Court for quite some time especially because they were operating out of the second floor of City Hall for a while.

Jimmy Moreno said just as a point of clarification that $2 million is an accurate design cost for that particular building and the scope and the size of that building. It usually design costs are about 10% of the building cost, which we are looking at about a $20 million cost for that building.

Ikani Taumoepeau, City Manager said I just wanted to share on this as we are splitting up that if the recommendation from council and obviously, we will take your directions, on the Municipal Court design is to be reduced all I would ask is to confirm and we can confirm with staff later to whatever that money is reduced to is that we can actually do a design with it because if we can’t then I would recommend that we appropriate it to something that can get done.

Councilor Corran said I would ask that we take the $2 million and put it to whatever we can do to move the books up out of the library to get that moving so that we show that investment. I would like us to have more beyond just a building conversation. I don’t know if metro court is on our future horizons but I would not want us to embark on designing a court building that couldn’t accommodate an expanded version of

Municipal Court if that is something that is an inevitability in our future so for me that ambiguity in our potential future I think it would be important to consider that so I would like us to think more critically about where Municipal Court is going. I don’t want people to be functioning in a historic building that is falling down and is at the end of its life very interesting way of putting it any more than anyone else but I also don’t want us to invest in something that will become obsolete in a finite amount of time and so I would ask that we get more information about Municipal Court, what is happening with it? What the possibilities are? And I would like to see us have that conversation about where that is headed and what kind of investment would mean for the future of

Municipal Court as it exists. So, I would ask that the $2 million just going and showing an investment of where we are going with the library. I don’t know if that could be applied. I suspect it could be. I have heard from the folks in the library that they have a number of phases before even the first phase of construction could benefit from increased investment so I would ask that that $2 million go to that instead.

Councilor Harris said I think I mentioned the Municipal Court thing too and I also am unclear about what the future of that building is. If it is going to be $20 million to rehab it versus moving it to a new building. I don’t know that it makes sense to put $2 million towards a design to rehab on something that we are not going to do. I just think it is a little premature to have that on a list of projects right now. We have plenty of stuff with facilities upkeep to make sure the air conditioners work through the summer at least.

Councilor Bencomo asked is the TIDD available for any sort of projects for Municipal

Court?

Chris Faivre said certainly, it is up to the TIDD board, aka council, too make that determination on how to spend those funds. We are hoping to get the Phase III back on the master plan here soon and then bring it to the TIDD board for a Work Session in future discussion. So those are certainly conversations you guys could have with those TIDD funds in the future whether it is to an alternate location which there may be options downtown to explore that but certainly if that is what the board decides they want to do that would be within their purview certainly.

Councilor Bencomo said again we have to look at all the places to leverage dollars and so I think those are important pathways to consider when thinking about how to best extend the life of this money.

Chris Faivre said if I could just make one more comment too here, this is just a reminder this is just for two years. So, if that is the conversation we can visit some of these in two years and see where certain projects are at that time.

Councilor Munoz said for the study for Municipal Court it will take $2 million?

Jimmy Moreno said yes, for the design.

Councilor Munoz asked it wouldn’t necessarily make sense to split that up? I am in consensus that we could use those $2 million to help phase the library work.

Mayor Enriquez said again a good reminder of why we moved to increase the GRT.

There is a lot of catching up to do. There is a lot of things. I agree also with moving towards a rec center. When we said we neglected a lot of things. Again, I go back to the increase in population and Meerscheidt is still the only rec center we have. So, increase in another rec center for that. The library has been neglected. We all talked about that, and we all support the library and the increases there so I would agree with that. The other thing I just wanted to point out again, the driving track again became an urgency and the reason that we putting more as opposed to the county is because it is supposed to be at the future site of the Public Safety Training Facility.

So, it is going to be at our location. It is going to be our training facility used by not only police and fire but all our employees that drive vehicles. So, we will get more use out of it. Again, I can’t stress it. It just became urgent because the track that we used to use is no longer available, but I know there is other people in the audience that probably want to speak to this issue so I can open it up to public comment if anybody would like to come up and share their thoughts.

Tim Jenkins, Member of the Public said one of the main reasons the GRT increase was created was for public safety. The very core foundation and building blocks of any school, house, city, or community is safety. Without safety you don’t have city.

Without safety you don’t have a community. Without safety you don’t have confidence. You don’t have trust. You literally don’t have anything of value. It is a core fundament of life, liberty, and the pursuit of soundness. I would like to clearly state that for the record all six town hall meetings were clearly sabotaged on purpose by certain very vocal group of individuals who made sure they were at every single one of those meetings to stack the votes against public safety. To vote in districts that they were not even belonged in. To make sure that they had the power and authority to come back and throw this in city councils’ face when in all reality in all honest truth before God they don’t really, truly, sincerely care about the health and safety and wellbeing of our children as long as they can defund the police. The vile hatred in these council chambers about our police officers is despicable and absolutely disgusting. So, in all truth and honesty the votes that were gathered as a result of the six town hall meetings about the GRT should never even be counted or considered because those numbers are a lie and fraud and not honest, or true, or upright, or just in any way. As for me and my family, we stand behind honesty and truth and justice.

Not a system that lies to skew the numbers to get what you want and then come back and scream and yell when you don’t get what you lied about. The enemy is at the

gate, and the gate has been left wide open. The real question is what are we all going to do about that? This is not a you problem. It is a we problem and we all need to come together and help each other. There is a pure evil that lurks here and we need combat and get rid of.

Lucas Herndon, Member of the Public said I am from District 2 for the record. I have been in nearly every council meeting on these GRT funds since last summer. I have shown up for the meetings after meeting because I respect this process. I respect the work that you do and I respect the voters who made this GRT increase possible, but we need to talk about respect because it goes both ways. We respected the process.

We showed up when we were asked to. We filled out surveys. We spoke during public comments. The message was consistent across neighborhoods, across demographics and across this entire city. Invest in our communities, parks, recreation centers, roads, and libraries. So, I have to ask, where is the respect for us? Where is the respect for the voters who trusted you with their money? Where is the respect for the families who told you what they needed? This resolution or these two combined continually applied more money to the best funded department of this city, the cops.

By contrast, things like the fire apparatus replacement makes sense. Firefighters respond to medical emergencies, fires, and crises across our community. That is community infrastructure but a police training track, a training facility for a department that already has the largest budget. That is not what we voted for. That is not community safety. Director Faivre’s comments suggest redirecting road funds to recreation centers, putting neighborhoods against each other, making us choose between fixing our streets or building a space for kids. That is not respect. That is not listening. That is not honoring the process you asked us to participate in. Here is what respect looks like. Honoring the public input you received, understanding we didn’t vote for a GRT increase to build training centers. We voted for infrastructure that serves every person in this community. Stop asking working families to choose between basic needs when there is already money being spent on the wrong priorities. I am asking you today to reconsider the millions and millions for LCPD, keep road funds intact, redirect these police funds to the community projects if you need to find more funding. We will be watching and be at the next big meeting because we have respect for this city.

Jim Hoerst, Member of the Public said in my mind prevention of crime should be the top priority. In my mind recreation facilities and the like are crime prevention and I think crime prevention is much more efficient than other remedies. I don’t think a cop command post or whatever it is called is likely to prevent crime. It may help crime response, but it is not likely to prevent crime.

Spencer Tanner, Member of the Public said I think that on this item as some of the councilors have been discussing and we the people who spoke at the community meetings had pointed out and we should really consider what already has funding where we are already spending money. The GRT is something we voted to do as a community, and we are looking at it in terms of what are things that don’t get funding regularly. Police, if I understand correctly, have about 25% of the general fund where as library gets like 2%. I don’t know if my numbers are correct there but this was on general research I was doing back up in the seats but we know that the police gets a lot of funds and a lot of funding and this GRT situation you know it is like we are

discussing are we going to move a little bit from the Municipal, are we going to move this over, that over, are we going to take the 4.3 some of that to the library? We are kind of moving peanuts around it sounds like for everything else. The GRT is a situation where I think that we could draw on that to do what we asked for which is community projects. Things like rec centers, libraries, water, etcetera, all those types of infrastructure create not only more safety and immediacy they create safety in the long term. They create social and emotional learning amongst community members.

They create bonding amongst community members, they create interconnectedness, things that reduce crime.

These are things, it is not just short-term benefit, but it is long term benefit so that is my ask, thank you.

Sylvia, Member of the Public said I am from District 2. So, the wider Las Cruces community voted you all in to be our voices for making decisions. So, when I see

Mayor Eric Enriquez speaking at anti-abortion rallies and Police Chief Jeremy Story attempting to get social media famous, I don’t see our officials doing their jobs. So back in December and October the citizens of Las Cruces voiced their opinions on how we should be spending our GRT budget and our biggest priority from what it seems like is to provide renovations to the public library, new recreational center, new wastewater management treatment facility and those were the big three. The proposed training facility for the Las Cruces Police Department and Fire Department I believe was number 12 in order of priority, so it is clear what the Las Cruces community has voiced their needs for. I found it very suspicious that Jeremy and the

Police Department are trying very hard to push this training facility for our Police

Department despite the fact that the public has voiced their opinions and as Bencomo said the police department will always have funding. I think back to June of last year in this group and the community planned on an explicitly peaceful protest downtown and LCPD responded with snipers on top of the library and other neighboring building.

I also think back how we have citizens murdered by LCPD two times more than the national average, so I don’t trust our police department to help our community when we show time and time again that they have been the antagonizers. I don’t trust our police department when we have Flock cameras on almost every corner when these have not shown to decrease crime but to actually help ICE track immigrants and to help police track women fleeing other states to get much needed reproductive health care. So, I don’t trust our police with more funding and more toys and gadgets to train within a new fancy facility. What does help crime decrease is to get kids active in their community and to get back to the public voting meeting. Back in September we had voiced that we wanted rec center, library renovations, and such so please listen to your constituents.

Sierra Admister, Member of the Public said as someone who has been an active witness to the Project Jupiter mess and to have elected folks decisions very opposed to the popular one of the public. I am extremely tired and disappointed to be here today to ask you to not make a decision that is not very opposed to the popular one of the public. Why did you make us all drag ourselves out to these public sticker meetings if you planned on ignoring what we had to say? I have already shared here stats that show more funding for police is not only ineffective in helping reduce crime but also has many measurable consequences for communities. There are people from older generations that come here because they make a big part of the select few

that have the privilege of being able to make these meetings regularly and I hear meetings after meeting about the terrifying delinquent youth. Okay fine, these kids who are trying to exist as best as they can to survive conditions they were randomly born are so scary but if you are really so terrified wouldn’t you be desperate for changes that would actually solve the problem. Throwing money at a system that is statistically failing to solve crimes is a mistake that we cannot afford right now. If you find yourself passionate about more policing and harsher punishments for young folk maybe there should be a reflection on what you actually want to see. Are we afraid of crime or are we afraid of the uncomfortable truth of our own community? There are real material reasons for crime, and these reasons can be addressed and mended.

Do, you want a safer community, or do you just want punishment and exile for the youth who are also a part of this community. A lot of the same folks will be so vocal on being prolife and quoting the bible and turn around and want to cast out the troubled youth and the homeless. The hypocrisy is jarring. There is no place in public political decisions for specific religious belief period, but what we definitely don’t need is a presence of this existential dissonance where calls to actions contradict the very teachings you claim to hold sacred. These funds should go directly to the community.

Specifically, to programs that support our youth that address the root causes of crime.

We should fund solutions that work not strategies based on fear. I don’t believe this fear is the popular narrative to Las Cruces. I think for people who are involved in the community and actively a part of things that make it better there is a huge welcoming attitude.

Karen Quevedo, Member of the Public said I live in District 2. I am here to promote public safety in Las Cruces and because I want more safety and not less, I am here to ask this council not give a single penny of our GRT funds to LCPD. Research has long shown that the safest communities have high levels of investment in resources, infrastructure and social services and that addressing root causes of behavior that is criminalized. Root causes like lack of jobs, access to health care and housing instability is more effective for safety than policing. Research from the Brookings

Institution in 2025 showed that providing jobs and educational opportunities in high poverty neighborhoods is a primary factor in preventing violence. A well-funded neighborhood is a safe neighborhood. Cops don’t keep us safe, never have. This is not a new insight. They create fear and violence and perpetuate lies about our own community and present themselves as a singular solution to violence of their own making. To quote Melanie Brazzell, research fellow of Public Policy of Harvard

Kennedy School, when speaking of police violence is both their alibi and their outcome. In 2025 alone cops killed 32 people in New Mexico, again per capita that is more than in any other state. Meanwhile LCPD lutes the resources of our communities that should be used to actually address safety programs that meet human needs. With the GRT increase we have the opportunity to fund those community projects supported by the community that actually result in improved safety, rec centers, community centers, ADA compliant parks, skate parks, libraries, affordable housing, public transportation, safe streets, safe roads, safe water systems, so much basic needed infrastructure. This council should be supporting policies and investments that make real safety possible. It is time that we stop accepting the violence of policing and start instead to build safety through life affirming community-based programs and practices. This is difficult, uphill and collective work and we can start today.

Jovanny Hernandez, Member of the Public said I guess I won’t take up much of your time. I would just ask that each of you vote with the community in mind, remembering what it is that people came out to do whenever you all held these listening sessions, voting sessions and everything like this in an increase in continued engagement of community in this process. There was a lot more people here earlier and it really says something for the folks that stuck out through this process. GRT is not something that particularly, I don’t know it is not like a super sexy thing that happens in the city administration, but it is important to us, and we know this is where the future of our community lies.

Albert, Member of the Public said many of your constituents are living from paycheck- to-paycheck state of survival. The fear of being unhoused looms over their day to day knowing that what follows is further criminalization. Many people feel so disconnected from local governance that they don’t even make the effort to participate. You talk to people and they say things like what is the point, they just do whatever they want.

They always do whatever they want. There is always a day. Elected officials have seen as separate from their constituents, you and many others who shape the future of Las Cruces are seen as the elite who hold power and will utilize it to further their interest or the interest of private investors or interest of millionaires or billionaires, not the interest of your constituency. You must remember the structure of this pecking order. The constituents stay at the top, that is who you serve. On September 30th and the following weeks, you asked for the community’s input on what projects the GRT would fund. Our community showed up. Many rearranged work shifts and engaged their neighbors to participate in this public input opportunity even though it gets represented a group of people who weren’t there to I don’t know, prevent the process from happening equitably. That is not true. That is just people showing up. Our community voiced their opinions and went to the extent of carefully documenting their votes which is why we were attending multiple ones, not to vote multiple times but to be witnesses to this vote. In the months that followed we have seen the gross misrepresentation of the public’s input. Projects involving the police barely even made the top ten when you look at the votes. This city has reported continuous increase in crime and at the same time that we continue to increase police funding there is an obvious trend there that speaks to what happens when we continue to deprioritize and defund our community’s direct material needs. Crime goes up when our living conditions deteriorate. You are being asked to keep an eye out for funding opportunities for our libraries, all abilities park, roads, wastewater treatment facilities, alternatives for carceral policies that work at addressing crime to the root. This is what the people want, the expertise required to meet these needs exists and is likely in the room with us right now.

Jay Choate, Member of the Public said I am here to express the same concerns as the community members have. Listening to community in my mind, I am studying

Public Admin, areas I care about is community impact and ethics. A part of that for me there is a big lack of trust in the government right now, across the country and it is present here in the city too, right? Obviously, people worry about what the government is doing and when you have these events you reach out to community and say, hey what do you want? You do that outreach and you decide we are going to prioritize other projects instead if anyways I feel like that sends mixed signals to a lot

of people. At the very least some people may be active in the community. I know when I went to those meetings, I wasn’t influenced by other people to vote about how

I did. I voted on what the community genuinely needed or what I felt the community needed and so I just hope that we can prioritize what the community actually expressed. To me that was the whole point of those meetings and if we are not going to listen to them then what is the point of doing those meetings in the first place.

Beyond that if there is such an outsized need for some of these projects that the community didn’t list or didn’t list out on the posters that you had there then I feel like burden of truth should fall on the government to prove why we need more ways to fund these things so there should be a lot of evidence and a lot of community engagement about that and further more I would appreciate some of the points councilors raised earlier. I was thinking why isn’t police just approaching through other funds or going to the state instead of trying to go through here which it is harder to get some of these projects funded through those other avenues because they are a little less flashy, a little less impressive to say, oh I funded this thing because the small incremental improvements make a big impact in our communities. Really just focusing on that and trying to figure out where we can diversify our funding so that we are approaching through the best places that can actually get funded projects needed that impact our community the most.

Linda St.Claire, Member of the Public said I am the President of the Friends of the

Thomas Branigan Memorial Library. So, you all know that I am here to say that the library is very important. For me a key issue, in a former life I was a CPA, the idea that there is not a line item in the budget specific to the library I find very concerning. The fact that I was one of the people who attended all six of the district sessions, I don’t even live in the city, I live in the county but I hear from the members of the Friends and I hear from the people who come to the library all the time and this is a very important part of their life. It does so many things for so many people and I think that the comments here today have suggested that. I likewise think that there is time and place for a lot of different services for the city. I actually sent an email to Chief Story about a program that was in another city that was very successful in reducing crime and I said, “Hey maybe this is something that the Friends could work with the Police

Department to try and do these kinds of projects too”. So, it is not that I am opposed to looking at different problems and solving them in different ways but at the end of the day. I do believe that supporting the library is supporting public safety and I understand that there are a lot of different demands here but I would be happy to sit down and talk to any of you about why I think that the library needs to be at the top of that list when you look at what the priorities of the community are.

Christine Rivera said it sounds like we have consensus to move a couple of the funding, Municipal Court design we are moving to the library and then Bruins/Motel we are moving to a rec center. We have consensus to move forward to change those items then we can call for the vote for the resolution.

Chris Faivre asked do we need to discuss the 60% projects before we vote or are we just voting on the 40%? So do we want to have a conversation on the 60% projects and if there is any adjustments there, again we have fire stations, 4 million for street maintenance and traffic calming and I just again talked with Mr. Moreno from Public

Works and he said $500,000 is an adequate amount for these first two years of traffic

calming so I feel like we can get a lot done with the cost of the average traffic calming projects. So, 5 million/4 million for streets, the money for public safety fleet upkeep and then money for ADA facility maintenance, so those were the ones proposed for the 60%.

Councilor Bencomo said I will always talk about the pavement conditions index and how I don’t think it’s enough. To Mayor Pro Tem’s analogy about the car and like waiting for like six months to put oil in your car or whatever some of these cars are dead. Some of these roads are at the end of their lives and they are mostly in lower income neighborhoods and lower income communities and so I think again there is just never enough for these things and to me that is disappointing so if there is ever a work around in getting more money towards street maintenance I will always go for that and when we talk about public safety I think you know just today we talked about road safety and having folks here who came to talk about distracted driving and the number of casualties that we have seen in Las Cruces. That is public safety and often that has to do with design and so I just, I think for me I continue to feel disappointed that there is not quite ever enough to go towards the projects that would help low- income neighborhoods the most. City Councilor Becky Corran moved, seconded by City Councilor Michael

Harris, to Approve Resolution No. 26-124.

Councilor Becky Corran, and City Councilor John Munoz 7.4 COUNCIL BILL NO. 26-017; ORDINANCE NO. 3109: AN ORDINANCE

AMENDING CHAPTER 24, PROCUREMENT CODE, OF THE LAS CRUCES

MUNICIPAL CODE. Alicia Hernandez, Purchasing Manager gave the overhead presentation.

Councilor Harris asked to clarify the responses submitted by other competitors, compensation details, is this during the bidding process?

Alicia Hernandez said yes.

Councilor Harris asked those things aren’t IPRA-able during the bidding process?

Alicia Hernandez said yes, you are correct. It is during the open bidding process. City Councilor Becky Corran moved, seconded by City Councilor Michael

Harris, to Approve Ordinance No. 3109.

Mattiace, City Councilor Michael Harris, City Councilor Becky Corran, and City

Councilor John Munoz

ABSENT: City Councilor Johana Bencomo

8. BOARD APPOINTMENTS 8.1 COUNCILOR MUNOZ APPOINTS GILBERT AMEZQUITA TO THE PARKS &

REC BOARD. 8.2 COUNCILOR MATTIACE WILL BE APPOINTED TO THE MPO POLICY

BOARD.

8.3 LARRY ALTAMIRANO City Councilor Becky Corran moved, seconded by City Councilor Michael

Harris, to appoint Larry Altamirano to the Senior Programs Advisory Board.

9. NOTICE OF PROPOSED ORDINANCE(S)

1) There will be no public discussion.

2) A Councilor may ask staff for clarification on the proposed ordinance(s). 9.1 None.

10. CITY COUNCIL MEMBER BOARD REPORTS AND COMMENT 10.1 COUNCILOR MCCLURE I just want to quickly say I would be in full support of an all-inclusive park. I feel like I am back to my Park & Rec days here. I think the idea of equity in terms of play is a conversation we haven’t had yet necessarily in the city and I would be in support and I would hope my fellow councilors would be in support of something like that as well to at least point staff into that direction and I think anybody who watched today will know that the budget fort this is going to take a couple of cycles to get to it but at least to start planning it what it would look like here in Las Cruces because it is as I understand it our Parks & Rec Director already has experience with something like that. Super helpful in this situation and I know a lot of people feel that impact of not being able to play in the ways that they could. I think that we could definitely look at that in the next upcoming months if everybody else agrees to that. 10.2 COUNCILOR MATTIACE None. 10.3 COUNCILOR HARRIS I was at the Farmer’s Market this weekend. It was great but I was also noticing that kind of the only barricade between people and the street are just signs, little stand up barricades and then we just had an incident, not we but over the weekend in LA at a

parade where somebody drove through a crowd and so I think it would be worth looking at to see if we can maybe improve downtown with some popup bollards or something to better protect areas where crowds gather.

Second, just a shout out to Transit. Thank you very much Richard, go Transit. Buses keep cars off the roads which reduces maintenance and traffic and everything for that.

So, I want to see that keeping continuous improvement. Then I am also in favor of looking at an all-inclusive park. I think that is a very interesting idea. Also, since we are talking about maintenance, I saw something very interesting this weekend on the use of bricks as paving material. It is more of a technical deep dive into how that is done in other cities. So maybe Public Works can look at that.

Last since the conversation around Flock and stuff comes up. I think there are plenty of ways that the community and the police department can work together. I have personally submitted videos from some cameras that I own to the Police Department to help with their investigations and we have a system for that and we already pay for it. We have an evidence collection system, and it seems crummy to me that we have corporations coming in and trying to wedge themselves between police departments and their communities in order to just make some profit where they really have no place. I think the city and the police, and our first responders can work directly with the community and that is a lot more effective for everybody.

10.4 COUNCILOR BENCOMO First and foremost, I want to really deeply thank Catrina and Scott, they are gone. I am sure they will hear me. We had our District 4 meeting last week and it was very very well attended and very well organized. All thanks to them. So, I am just deeply grateful to our constituents’ team. I want to thank Fire, Housing, Economic

Development, Community Development, Utilities, Public Works, Sustainability, Codes,

PD, our ACM staff, for being there. If I miss anyone, I am so sorry. I am very grateful for everyone who was there. Every time I looked up and looked around you guys were talking to somebody, consistently so I just really appreciate that. I got really great feedback about how the meeting went and it was just a wonderful meeting and often public comment can feel like a one sided conversation and now I am having a one sided conversation and so just being able to have the support from staff to create those kinds of spaces to to have really meaningful conversations with residents and answer questions just means a lot so thank you very much to everyone who came.

Thank you to Councilor Harris for leading on the Flock issue. I think this is an issue I had not thought about enough but the more I talk to people who care about surveillance the more I see how deeply intertwined it is with the safety of the most vulnerable in our communities actually so thank you for that. 10.5 COUNCILOR CORRAN I do want to thank the folks from Americas Job Center for the Mock It Till You Rock It.

I think Councilor McClure was there in an opposite shift of me and a whole bunch of city staff participated along with a bunch of other people and it was really cool to meet a lot of students who are planning their future lives and talk to them. I only made one cry which I still feel bad about. I am so sorry. It was a really great experience to see

students, the future of our workforce, the future of our college classrooms, city employees, really enthusiastically working on their resumes, which were great so I hope some of them will come to join us at the city soon. So, thanks to everyone who participated and shared your gifts with those students.

I also have been visiting a lot of fountains, parks lately and in many parks as I always do the fountains haven’t been on. So, I just wanted to sort of speak to this. I know we have sort of a system and we don’t want these things to freeze but climate change is happening and I think when things freeze is getting smaller and smaller so I would just ask that we would just consider when we turn the fountains on as a fundamentally important part of our city life or as part of our public life I don’t know exactly how that conversation goes in Parks & Rec but I do know that I was at a park and it was about

90 degrees and there was folks trying the fountain and it was really telling to me so we might have to rethink something in our timing of the fountains coming on.

I also just want to speak to two other things that are alluded to at different times. One was the CBP station which a number of us have spoken out against the three proposed sites which are in the city and which some are not. A lot of folks gave public comments. I have heard from many many many residents who urged CBP if they are watching to not consider putting their station in a neighborhood near elementary schools, people’s backyards, our animal shelter, parks and so I hope that the feedback has been heard and in the ways that it has been expressed and then the other thing that I wanted to speak to is someone alluded to the El Paso rate case and

I just want to say really quickly that the city and the county have joined together again to intervene on behalf of residents so that we hopefully can fight the rate case so that folks don’t necessarily have to pay as much as El Paso Electric is proposing. The last time the city intervened in the 2020 rate case which was ultimately resolved by 2023 the city was able to save somewhere between $16 to $17 million per year for rate payers because of their intervention in those cases. I really want to thank city management and our attorneys for investing in that intervention as mentioned it is thousands and thousands of pages. It takes legal expertise and is very hard to fight for the residents to not have to pay into private equities profit margin. So, I am really proud of the city that we intervene in this conversation, and I just want to say the city is tracking on that and that we are here and we will be advocating for residents as this moves forward so we will keep you posted as I am sure you will hear more as time goes on. 10.6 COUNCILOR MUNOZ Thank all of you for hanging in with us. Democracy is messy. If it were easy there would be more democratic republics around the world and there are not and it is about discussion and different viewpoints, different approaches to solutions and for the most part. I am glad that we had really good discussions from the public and good discussions here on the dais with our colleagues and whether we agree or disagree I think the intent is to really have consensus to do our best for our community. So, I appreciate that. Whether it is funding the library, whether it is funding an all-inclusive park which I would encourage all of my peers to help out with that whether it is a park or a recreation center that is more user friendly for folks from all different abilities that is appreciated or funding things for public safety or a CRM. There are so many priorities that we have and so few funds, but we will figure that out together.

I also wanted to thank our sign language professionals. I know we threw them for a loop sometimes when we throw Spanish in there, and I was worried about that because of access obviously, but I saw that they did not miss a beat there. I will try to keep my Italian and German to a minimum, not to throw anymore wrenches in there but thank you all for sticking with us. That is something that is definitely appreciated and I wanted to call that out today.

10.7 MAYOR ENRIQUEZ Mayor Pro Tem thanks for saying that. It is correct. It is challenging but it is great to have the involvement, and everyone take part. The beauty of it is we get to do this every other year. It is a good dilemma to have but that is why we increase so that we can catch up and do things and add value to our community and we will continue. If we don’t get everything that we want the first time around that is fine and I am looking forward to May 11th so we can discuss the GO Bond and look at that avenue for funds as well. Just for this week I just wanted to mention the Las Cruces International

Film Festival is here this week from April 8th to 11th. Thank you again to Ross Marks and Senator Steinborn because they put a lot into that and it really helps our economy and our students at NMSU with filming, so it is a great thing to be a part of. And also,

Organ Mountain High School will be the host for Shattered Lives this year. Again, to discuss with health and safety on impaired driving for our students so thank you

Police, Fire, and some of our hospitals will be there as well to partner up with that event that will take place later this week, Thursday and Friday.

11. CITY MANAGER REPORT 11.1 IKANI TAUMOEPEAU I just want to say thank you, I have been out for a bit. I appreciate Assistant City

Managers Sonya and David helping to run the show and the executive team and all the staff who continue to run this organization. So, thank you all so much.

So, for Police, something I brought up last time but the department completed the

CALEA assessment and it went very well before CALEA commissioners this will be presented to them in July, answer a few questions, do a oral assessment and this process has been underway for over three years and we are very close to achieving this accreditation. So, thank you to Chief and all your staff.

Airport, on April 2nd, which passed. The Airport hosted the United States Marine

Corps. in the Center for Counter Measures, CCM, at White Sands Missile Range.

Marine Corp pilots flew in a CH-53K Stallion helicopter from Yuma Proving Ground,

Arizona to Las Cruces International Airport to conduct flight and system testing. The airport offered both the Marine Corps and CCM contingents immediate air space, ground facilities and supporting for testing that would otherwise require months of planning and preparation. It was a great day for training support of our military partners. We appreciate the work of our airport staff for making this happen. So, thank you to Blake and your staff.

TIDD, there was a question or comment made about sharing safety for downtown. I wanted to share that this is something that has come previously before from the dais,

I appreciate Chief he has brought this up to my attention that this is a priority as well so in line with what I have been hearing from the dais so I just wanted to share that staff, Community Development, VLC and police have been working together to look at bollards for this and so that is something that is being prepared as we speak so I appreciate that and so that is something that is already occurring right now.

There was also a comment today on the skate park and what is happening and to divert funds if we can. For all of those who may be watching or sitting with us, this is the update of the skate park. The City’s legal team has been in constant communication with the legal team from the contractor associated with the Walnut

Skate Park. We have been in communication, and we have sent our list of demands and look forward to further meeting with the contractor’s legal team. We reiterate our desire to continue productive negotiations however the city will not accept any resolution that does not make the city whole and any resolution must deliver a quality skate park for the people in our community to enjoy. The city will continue to vigorously pursue all remedies available to it under New Mexico Law and contractual principles.

12. ADJOURNMENT 12.1 City Councilor John Munoz moved, seconded by City Councilor Michael Harris, to adjourn at 5:51 p.m.

Mayor

City Clerk